A Southern Baptist Convention leader says that rather than representing two points on a spectrum of Christianity, evangelical Christianity and liberal Protestantism are different and competing religions.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said in a podcast briefing Jan. 13 that two recent scandals in the news demonstrate “the depth of the chasm that separates evangelical Christianity from more liberal Protestant denominations, in particular the Episcopal Church.”

A Jan. 9 story in the New York Times raised the question of whether in a rush to name a female bishop, church leaders failed to properly vet Cook, who pleaded guilty to drunk driving in 2010.

Mohler acknowledged that evangelical Christians have their own share of moral scandals but said the two groups hold to a “different moral code,” further evident in a Religion News Service story about an openly lesbian and pro-choice seminary dean stepping down over conflicts with faculty and financial challenges.

“What is really scandalous in this situation is that this president didn’t lose her job because of her very prominent homosexuality advocacy nor her very open and ardent advocacy for abortion,” Mohler said. “Indeed she didn’t lose her job because of those things. She probably got her job because of those causes.”

Mohler said he drew attention to the stories “not particularly to dwell upon the Episcopal Church” but rather to repeat a point made in the early 20th century by Presbyterian theologian and Bible scholar J. Gresham Machen.

Machen is regarded among the last of the great leaders of Princeton theology, a Calvinist form of evangelical Christianity with followers including James P. Boyce, a Southern Baptist pastor, theologian and founder and first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859.

In the 20th century some observers believed the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention drifted into more modern theologies until a course correction in the 1980s and 1990s called the “conservative resurgence” required that all seminary professors teach the Bible is without error and literally true.

That prompted massive turnover in the faculties of SBC seminaries, which in turn led to formation of a number of alternative theology schools aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an SBC breakaway group formed in 1991.

Mohler, elected as the ninth president of Southern Seminary in 1993, is a high profile leader of a movement seeking return to the denomination’s Calvinist roots that goes by names including Neo-Calvinism and Young, Restless and Reformed.

“When you’re dealing with orthodox Christianity and Protestant liberalism, we are not dealing with two variants of the same religion,” Mohler said. “As Machen correctly said, judged by orthodox Christianity, we’re actually looking in this case at two rival religions, and these headlines, not to mention the stories behind them, make that point all too evident.”

A Southern Baptist Convention leader says that rather than representing two points on a spectrum of Christianity, evangelical Christianity and liberal Protestantism are different and competing religions.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said in a podcast briefing Jan. 13 that two recent scandals in the news demonstrate “the depth of the chasm that separates evangelical Christianity from more liberal Protestant denominations, in particular the Episcopal Church.”

A Jan. 9 story in the New York Times raised the question of whether in a rush to name a female bishop, church leaders failed to properly vet Cook, who pleaded guilty to drunk driving in 2010.

Mohler acknowledged that evangelical Christians have their own share of moral scandals but said the two groups hold to a “different moral code,” further evident in a Religion News Service story about an openly lesbian and pro-choice seminary dean stepping down over conflicts with faculty and financial challenges.

“What is really scandalous in this situation is that this president didn’t lose her job because of her very prominent homosexuality advocacy nor her very open and ardent advocacy for abortion,” Mohler said. “Indeed she didn’t lose her job because of those things. She probably got her job because of those causes.”

Mohler said he drew attention to the stories “not particularly to dwell upon the Episcopal Church” but rather to repeat a point made in the early 20th century by Presbyterian theologian and Bible scholar J. Gresham Machen.

Machen is regarded among the last of the great leaders of Princeton theology, a Calvinist form of evangelical Christianity with followers including James P. Boyce, a Southern Baptist pastor, theologian and founder and first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859.

In the 20th century some observers believed the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention drifted into more modern theologies until a course correction in the 1980s and 1990s called the “conservative resurgence” required that all seminary professors teach the Bible is without error and literally true.

That prompted massive turnover in the faculties of SBC seminaries, which in turn led to formation of a number of alternative theology schools aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an SBC breakaway group formed in 1991.

Mohler, elected as the ninth president of Southern Seminary in 1993, is a high profile leader of a movement seeking return to the denomination’s Calvinist roots that goes by names including Neo-Calvinism and Young, Restless and Reformed.

“When you’re dealing with orthodox Christianity and Protestant liberalism, we are not dealing with two variants of the same religion,” Mohler said. “As Machen correctly said, judged by orthodox Christianity, we’re actually looking in this case at two rival religions, and these headlines, not to mention the stories behind them, make that point all too evident.”

The firing of Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran highlights “the religious-liberty implications of the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage,” Southern Baptist Theological President Albert Mohler said in a podcast briefing Jan. 9.

Mohler said Cochran’s suspension and subsequent dismissal for writing a self-published book stating religious beliefs, including that homosexuality is a sin, is the latest example of “the newly defined vision of erotic liberty trumping religious liberty over and over again.”

“We have seen it in Arizona,” Mohler said. “We have seen it in Oregon. We have seen it in California. We have seen it in terms of the contraception mandate of the Obamacare legislation. We’ve seen it in terms of the California State University’s system casting Intervarsity Christian Fellowship off campus.”

“These cases are multiplying, and wherever you live they’re getting closer to home,” Mohler said. “Just ask the folks who live in Atlanta.”

Mayor Kasim Reed says Cochran was fired not for his religious views but for poor judgment. Cochran and the mayor’s office dispute whether the chief went through proper bureaucratic channels before publishing the book, but Reed said by airing his views Cochran could open the city to liability in the event of a workplace discrimination claim.

Mohler said excerpts of Cochran’s book described as “inflammatory content” were “little more than quoting the Bible.” The controversy, he said, raises a host of troubling questions, starting with “whether one can believe that homosexuality is a sin without discriminating against homosexuals.”

“The clear implication of the mayor’s decision is that the fire chief is out, not because he acted in any way in any discriminatory fashion toward any gay member of the fire department staff or anyone else for that matter, but simply because he expressed his biblical conviction that homosexuality is a sin.”

“Is the Bible itself now going to be defined as hate speech?” Mohler asked. “Can anyone who holds to a biblical understanding of sexuality, anyone who is a member of an evangelical congregation, serve in this kind of political and public role?

“Or, does that moral conviction absolutely mean in a categorical sense that discrimination is the obvious outcome? Or is holding the belief itself, is holding that biblical conviction itself, a form of discrimination, even if no discriminatory act ever follows?”

Mohler called what happened in Atlanta “a tragedy of epic proportions.”

“The public firing of Atlanta’s fire chief now makes abundantly clear that the alarm has been sounded,” he said. “Erotic liberty is now on the ascent, and religious liberty is everywhere in danger.”

Mayor Reed hired Cochran in 2010 to return to his previous job as Atlanta fire chief after working briefly in the Obama administration. According to a 2013 news report, the salary for the fire chief’s position ranges from $151,000 to a maximum of $221,000.

In recent weeks Cochran, a member of a Southern Baptist church, criticized his suspension in addresses to religious groups including the Georgia Baptist Convention Executive Board. Reed, who refers to himself as a person of faith, said those actions contributed to Cochran’s termination.

The Georgia Baptist Convention supported Cochran with an online petition calling for his reinstatement, which to date has collected more than 8,000 signatures.

The firing of Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran highlights “the religious-liberty implications of the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage,” Southern Baptist Theological President Albert Mohler said in a podcast briefing Jan. 9.

Mohler said Cochran’s suspension and subsequent dismissal for writing a self-published book stating religious beliefs, including that homosexuality is a sin, is the latest example of “the newly defined vision of erotic liberty trumping religious liberty over and over again.”

“We have seen it in Arizona,” Mohler said. “We have seen it in Oregon. We have seen it in California. We have seen it in terms of the contraception mandate of the Obamacare legislation. We’ve seen it in terms of the California State University’s system casting Intervarsity Christian Fellowship off campus.”

“These cases are multiplying, and wherever you live they’re getting closer to home,” Mohler said. “Just ask the folks who live in Atlanta.”

Mayor Kasim Reed says Cochran was fired not for his religious views but for poor judgment. Cochran and the mayor’s office dispute whether the chief went through proper bureaucratic channels before publishing the book, but Reed said by airing his views Cochran could open the city to liability in the event of a workplace discrimination claim.

Mohler said excerpts of Cochran’s book described as “inflammatory content” were “little more than quoting the Bible.” The controversy, he said, raises a host of troubling questions, starting with “whether one can believe that homosexuality is a sin without discriminating against homosexuals.”

“The clear implication of the mayor’s decision is that the fire chief is out, not because he acted in any way in any discriminatory fashion toward any gay member of the fire department staff or anyone else for that matter, but simply because he expressed his biblical conviction that homosexuality is a sin.”

“Is the Bible itself now going to be defined as hate speech?” Mohler asked. “Can anyone who holds to a biblical understanding of sexuality, anyone who is a member of an evangelical congregation, serve in this kind of political and public role?

“Or, does that moral conviction absolutely mean in a categorical sense that discrimination is the obvious outcome? Or is holding the belief itself, is holding that biblical conviction itself, a form of discrimination, even if no discriminatory act ever follows?”

Mohler called what happened in Atlanta “a tragedy of epic proportions.”

“The public firing of Atlanta’s fire chief now makes abundantly clear that the alarm has been sounded,” he said. “Erotic liberty is now on the ascent, and religious liberty is everywhere in danger.”

Mayor Reed hired Cochran in 2010 to return to his previous job as Atlanta fire chief after working briefly in the Obama administration. According to a 2013 news report, the salary for the fire chief’s position ranges from $151,000 to a maximum of $221,000.

In recent weeks Cochran, a member of a Southern Baptist church, criticized his suspension in addresses to religious groups including the Georgia Baptist Convention Executive Board. Reed, who refers to himself as a person of faith, said those actions contributed to Cochran’s termination.

The Georgia Baptist Convention supported Cochran with an online petition calling for his reinstatement, which to date has collected more than 8,000 signatures.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman on public policy said he fears President Obama’s decision to act unilaterally on immigration policy will do more harm than good.

Writing for Time, Russell Moore, president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the president’s action threatens what he called an emerging consensus in Congress around the need to reform the nation’s immigration system.

In a speech to the nation Nov. 20, President Obama announced executive actions to crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons and not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay taxes as they register to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

Obama said the decision follows a year-and-a-half of inaction by the House of Representatives on a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate.

“Now, I continue to believe that the best way to solve this problem is by working together to pass that kind of common sense law,” Obama said. “But until that happens, there are actions I have the legal authority to take as president — the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican presidents before me — that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.”

Moore, who along with faith leaders including Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leader Suzii Paynter met in April with Obama in the Oval Office to discuss immigration, said on more than one occasion he has asked the president “not to turn immigration reform into a red state/blue state issue.”

Moore said regardless of the debate over whether the president has authority to take such actions unilaterally, “this is an unwise and counterproductive move” that threatens a “remarkable consensus” emerging on immigration policy, uniting the left and right in the business community, agriculture, law enforcement and religion.

“My hope is that the Republicans in Congress will not allow the president’s actions here to be a pretext for remaining in the rut of the status quo,” Moore said. “Too many people are harmed by this broken system, many of them our brothers and sisters in Christ. The lives of immigrant families, made in the image of God, are too important for political gamesmanship.”

“More importantly, I pray that our churches will transcend all of this posing and maneuvering that we see in Washington,” Moore continued. “Whatever our agreements and disagreements on immigration policy, we as the Body of Christ are those who see every human life as reflecting the image of God. Immigrant communities are a great blessing not only to this country, but to our churches. Many of the most anointed churches in evangelism and ministry are led by immigrants to this country.”

Some faith leaders, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, applauded the president’s action.

“We've been on record asking the administration to do everything within its legitimate authority to bring relief and justice to our immigrant brothers and sisters,” said Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, auxiliary Catholic bishop of Seattle and chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Migration. “As pastors, we welcome any efforts within these limits that protect individuals and protect and reunite families and vulnerable children."

Jim Wallis of Sojourners credited Obama with “putting people before politics.”

“Tonight, faith leaders and all those who have spent years trying to fix our broken immigration system should feel gratitude toward President Obama,” Wallis said.

David Beckmann of Bread for the World applauded the president’s “decision to craft improvements within his authority to our confused and unnecessarily harsh immigration system.”

“Our support of the president’s action is not about partisan politics,” Beckmann said. “It’s about millions of families who will have some respite from worry and new opportunities to work their way out of poverty. It is about our faith; the Bible is clear on how we should treat immigrants. It is one piece of our commitment to opportunity for all people.”

In 2011 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution asking government leaders “to implement, with the borders secured, a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country.”

It went on to specify that “this resolution is not to be construed as support for amnesty for any undocumented immigrant.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said long-term the biggest impact of Obama’s decision will likely not be on immigration but “the rule of law and our constitutional form of government.”

“What President Obama did last night was an executive branch overreach,” Mohler said in his daily podcast news briefing Nov. 21, “an overreach of presidential power that truly endangers the separation of powers that is at the heart of our constitutional form of government.”

]]>Ethics spokesman Russell Moore said he fears President Obama’s decision to move forward on immigration policy without Congress will only encourage Republicans to dig in their heels.

By Bob Allen

The Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman on public policy said he fears President Obama’s decision to act unilaterally on immigration policy will do more harm than good.

Writing for Time, Russell Moore, president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the president’s action threatens what he called an emerging consensus in Congress around the need to reform the nation’s immigration system.

In a speech to the nation Nov. 20, President Obama announced executive actions to crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons and not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay taxes as they register to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

Obama said the decision follows a year-and-a-half of inaction by the House of Representatives on a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate.

“Now, I continue to believe that the best way to solve this problem is by working together to pass that kind of common sense law,” Obama said. “But until that happens, there are actions I have the legal authority to take as president — the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican presidents before me — that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.”

Moore, who along with faith leaders including Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leader Suzii Paynter met in April with Obama in the Oval Office to discuss immigration, said on more than one occasion he has asked the president “not to turn immigration reform into a red state/blue state issue.”

Moore said regardless of the debate over whether the president has authority to take such actions unilaterally, “this is an unwise and counterproductive move” that threatens a “remarkable consensus” emerging on immigration policy, uniting the left and right in the business community, agriculture, law enforcement and religion.

“My hope is that the Republicans in Congress will not allow the president’s actions here to be a pretext for remaining in the rut of the status quo,” Moore said. “Too many people are harmed by this broken system, many of them our brothers and sisters in Christ. The lives of immigrant families, made in the image of God, are too important for political gamesmanship.”

“More importantly, I pray that our churches will transcend all of this posing and maneuvering that we see in Washington,” Moore continued. “Whatever our agreements and disagreements on immigration policy, we as the Body of Christ are those who see every human life as reflecting the image of God. Immigrant communities are a great blessing not only to this country, but to our churches. Many of the most anointed churches in evangelism and ministry are led by immigrants to this country.”

Some faith leaders, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, applauded the president’s action.

“We've been on record asking the administration to do everything within its legitimate authority to bring relief and justice to our immigrant brothers and sisters,” said Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, auxiliary Catholic bishop of Seattle and chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Migration. “As pastors, we welcome any efforts within these limits that protect individuals and protect and reunite families and vulnerable children."

Jim Wallis of Sojourners credited Obama with “putting people before politics.”

“Tonight, faith leaders and all those who have spent years trying to fix our broken immigration system should feel gratitude toward President Obama,” Wallis said.

David Beckmann of Bread for the World applauded the president’s “decision to craft improvements within his authority to our confused and unnecessarily harsh immigration system.”

“Our support of the president’s action is not about partisan politics,” Beckmann said. “It’s about millions of families who will have some respite from worry and new opportunities to work their way out of poverty. It is about our faith; the Bible is clear on how we should treat immigrants. It is one piece of our commitment to opportunity for all people.”

In 2011 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution asking government leaders “to implement, with the borders secured, a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country.”

It went on to specify that “this resolution is not to be construed as support for amnesty for any undocumented immigrant.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said long-term the biggest impact of Obama’s decision will likely not be on immigration but “the rule of law and our constitutional form of government.”

“What President Obama did last night was an executive branch overreach,” Mohler said in his daily podcast news briefing Nov. 21, “an overreach of presidential power that truly endangers the separation of powers that is at the heart of our constitutional form of government.”

]]>Bob AllenPoliticsFri, 21 Nov 2014 14:24:01 -0500SBC leader says North Korea partly right about Kenneth Baehttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/29493-sbc-leader-says-north-korea-partly-right-about-kenneth-bae
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/29493-sbc-leader-says-north-korea-partly-right-about-kenneth-baeAl Mohler says freed American missionary Kenneth Bae wasn’t planning a “religious coup d’etat” in the political sense, “but any Christian looking at the nation of North Korea has to hope that there will be a toppling of that regime.”

Editor's note: This story was edited after posting to correct an error.

By Bob Allen

After the weekend release of a missionary imprisoned two years for allegedly planning a “religious coup d’etat” in North Korea, a Southern Baptist Convention leader said that according to “a Christian worldview” the nation’s totalitarian regime should fall.

In a podcast briefing Nov. 10, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., described North Korea’s view that American detainee Kenneth Bae’s work with a Christian evangelical organization posed a threat as more than just the delusion of a “paranoid state.”

“The North Korean regime is indeed paranoid, but when it comes to its opposition to Christianity, we might say the North Korean government is at least on this one issue thinking rather clearly,” Mohler said. “Because there is no worldview more directly at odds with the worldview of that paranoid state than the worldview of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

On Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the release of both Bae, a Korean-American from Lynnwood, Wash., and fellow prisoner Matthew Todd Miller from Bakersfield, Calif. That came after James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, traveled to Pyongyang as an envoy of President Obama on a secret mission seeking their release.

The U.S. government facilitated their return to the United States on a government jet that landed late Saturday night at an Air Force base in Washington State. President Obama called it “a wonderful day for them and their families” and praised Clapper for “doing a great job on what was obviously a challenging mission.”

Miller, 25, was sentenced Sept. 14 to six years of forced labor for planning “hostile acts” of espionage under guise of seeking political asylum after reportedly tearing up his tourist visa.

Bae, 46, served two years of a 15-year sentence stemming from his arrest in November 2012 while leading a tour through his China-based business allegedly used as a front company to bring missionaries into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

A spokesman for North Korea’s Supreme Court released a statement in 2013 alleging that between 2006 and October 2012 Bae “set up plot-breeding bases in different places of China for the purpose of toppling” the government.

The official said Bae committed “hostile acts” including preaching sermons critical of the North Korean government at churches in the U.S. and South Korea. He also allegedly planned to bring in at least 250 students trained as missionaries on tourist visas in a project called “Operation Jericho,” named after the story in the Book of Joshua about Israelite spies who infiltrated the ancient city of Jericho prior to its conquest.

After his sentencing, Bae’s sister said on CNN that her brother “is not a spy” and never had any evil intentions toward North Korea or any other country. Upon his release, Bae’s family thanked the government of North Korea for allowing him to return home.

“We believe that God is with people who endure hardship, and that he never leaves them,” Bae’s sister Terri Chung said in a statement Nov. 8. “It is with great joy and with thankfulness to God to see Kenneth released. Our family could not have been sustained without the knowledge that Kenneth was in God’s care, when it seemed we were helpless to do anything.”

Over the weekend Bae’s sister told media that her brother "still has a tremendous heart for North Korea" and "bears no ill will" toward the country that locked him up.

Mohler said Bae "was not planning a religious coup d'état in the political sense, but any Christian looking at the nation of North Korea has to hope that there will be a toppling of that regime, not only for the good, the flourishing and the freedom of the people there, but also for the freedom of preaching the gospel,” Mohler said.

]]>Al Mohler says freed American missionary Kenneth Bae wasn’t planning a “religious coup d’etat” in the political sense, “but any Christian looking at the nation of North Korea has to hope that there will be a toppling of that regime.”

Editor's note: This story was edited after posting to correct an error.

By Bob Allen

After the weekend release of a missionary imprisoned two years for allegedly planning a “religious coup d’etat” in North Korea, a Southern Baptist Convention leader said that according to “a Christian worldview” the nation’s totalitarian regime should fall.

In a podcast briefing Nov. 10, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., described North Korea’s view that American detainee Kenneth Bae’s work with a Christian evangelical organization posed a threat as more than just the delusion of a “paranoid state.”

“The North Korean regime is indeed paranoid, but when it comes to its opposition to Christianity, we might say the North Korean government is at least on this one issue thinking rather clearly,” Mohler said. “Because there is no worldview more directly at odds with the worldview of that paranoid state than the worldview of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

On Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the release of both Bae, a Korean-American from Lynnwood, Wash., and fellow prisoner Matthew Todd Miller from Bakersfield, Calif. That came after James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, traveled to Pyongyang as an envoy of President Obama on a secret mission seeking their release.

The U.S. government facilitated their return to the United States on a government jet that landed late Saturday night at an Air Force base in Washington State. President Obama called it “a wonderful day for them and their families” and praised Clapper for “doing a great job on what was obviously a challenging mission.”

Miller, 25, was sentenced Sept. 14 to six years of forced labor for planning “hostile acts” of espionage under guise of seeking political asylum after reportedly tearing up his tourist visa.

Bae, 46, served two years of a 15-year sentence stemming from his arrest in November 2012 while leading a tour through his China-based business allegedly used as a front company to bring missionaries into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

A spokesman for North Korea’s Supreme Court released a statement in 2013 alleging that between 2006 and October 2012 Bae “set up plot-breeding bases in different places of China for the purpose of toppling” the government.

The official said Bae committed “hostile acts” including preaching sermons critical of the North Korean government at churches in the U.S. and South Korea. He also allegedly planned to bring in at least 250 students trained as missionaries on tourist visas in a project called “Operation Jericho,” named after the story in the Book of Joshua about Israelite spies who infiltrated the ancient city of Jericho prior to its conquest.

After his sentencing, Bae’s sister said on CNN that her brother “is not a spy” and never had any evil intentions toward North Korea or any other country. Upon his release, Bae’s family thanked the government of North Korea for allowing him to return home.

“We believe that God is with people who endure hardship, and that he never leaves them,” Bae’s sister Terri Chung said in a statement Nov. 8. “It is with great joy and with thankfulness to God to see Kenneth released. Our family could not have been sustained without the knowledge that Kenneth was in God’s care, when it seemed we were helpless to do anything.”

Over the weekend Bae’s sister told media that her brother "still has a tremendous heart for North Korea" and "bears no ill will" toward the country that locked him up.

Mohler said Bae "was not planning a religious coup d'état in the political sense, but any Christian looking at the nation of North Korea has to hope that there will be a toppling of that regime, not only for the good, the flourishing and the freedom of the people there, but also for the freedom of preaching the gospel,” Mohler said.

]]>Bob AllenPeopleMon, 10 Nov 2014 12:56:27 -0500Mohler says churches cannot avoid LGBT issuehttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/organizations/item/29275-mohler-says-churches-cannot-avoid-lgbt-issue
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/organizations/item/29275-mohler-says-churches-cannot-avoid-lgbt-issueTheologian and seminary president Albert Mohler says this week’s ouster of a church means no Southern Baptist congregation can sidestep the question of whether homosexuality is right or wrong.

By Bob Allen

A leader in the Southern Baptist Convention says this week’s ouster of a congregation for violating the denomination’s teaching that homosexuality is always a sin established a dividing line that sooner or later every church will have to cross.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast Sept. 26 that Tuesday’s vote by the SBC Executive Committee to exclude New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, Calif., means there is no “third way” for sidestepping the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage in the nation’s second-largest faith group.

“Division is always painful, but on a clear question of biblical truth, division is sometimes the only act that faithfulness to Scripture will allow,” Mohler said. “This is one of those moments.”

Mohler said homosexuality and same-sex marriage “now loom as the great dividing line that will certainly tear some denominations apart and will lead yet others to define the terms of their convictional cooperation.” He said that is precisely what the Executive Committee did in its unanimous vote finding that New Heart is not a Southern Baptist church.

Earlier this year the members of New Heart Community Church considered firing their pastor after he said from the pulpit he no longer believes the traditional Christian view that all same-sex relationships are inherently sinful. Instead a majority adopted a recently proposed “Third Way” solution to the impasse of neither excluding members because they are gay nor judging those who firmly believe that sexual activity is only moral in the context of marriage between a man and woman.

In correspondence with SBC officials, church leaders tried to plead a case that the congregation did not “act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior,” language in the SBC constitution and bylaws to determine whether a church is in “friendly cooperation” with the national body.

Mohler said the Executive Committee “sent a signal that the Southern Baptist Convention intends to stand without compromise on this question.”

“In other words, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, on behalf of the denomination as a whole, saw clearly the impossibility of any third way,” Mohler said.

“The issue is now inescapable not only for the SBC Executive Committee, but for every church, every denomination, every seminary, indeed every Christian organization,” Mohler said. “The question will be asked, and some answer will be given.”

“When the question is asked, any answer that is not completely consistent with the church’s historical understanding of sexual morality, and also fully consistent with the full affirmation of biblical authority, will mean a full embrace of same-sex behaviors,” he said, “if not immediately, then eventually, and also a full embrace of same-sex relationships. There is no third way, and as this sad case makes very clear, there never was.”

Mohler said another illustration of the “dividing line” nature of homosexuality came the day before the SBC Executive Committee vote, when former President Jimmy Carter, who years ago resigned his membership in the Southern Baptist Convention over differences with the denomination’s new statement of faith, answered a question about LGBT rights at a community college in Michigan by saying that Jesus never discriminated against anyone.

“That’s one of those statements that you just frankly have to unpack word-by-word,” Mohler said. “Discrimination in this case is one of the odd words that fits our contemporary political context but really doesn’t fit the Scripture. What in the world does discrimination mean in this case?”

“There is no question that Jesus Christ very consistently held up the law and held up the moral principles of the law, making clear that not one jot or tittle of the law would disappear until all had been fulfilled,”Mohler said. “Of course, he is the very one who by his active and passive obedience perfectly fulfilled the law.

“But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went so far as to make very clear that the moral law continues amongst his own people. He went so far as to argue that indeed it matters in the interior, not merely in the exterior life.”

“It’s not enough to demonstrate an external compliance with the command, such as you shall not murder or you shall not commit adultery,” Mohler said. “Jesus said not only that those moral principles of the law continue, but that now it’s not enough for his people even to have anger in the heart tantamount to murder or lust in the heart tantamount to adultery.”

“Christians have to be exceedingly careful never to try to draw any line of division between Jesus and the Scripture,” Mohler said. “Jesus said of the Old Testament scriptures, these are they that testify of me. And concerning the New Testament scriptures, he promised his own disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them not away from the truth but into truth. And that is the evangelical affirmation of the total trustworthiness and truthfulness of Scripture.”

]]>Theologian and seminary president Albert Mohler says this week’s ouster of a church means no Southern Baptist congregation can sidestep the question of whether homosexuality is right or wrong.

By Bob Allen

A leader in the Southern Baptist Convention says this week’s ouster of a congregation for violating the denomination’s teaching that homosexuality is always a sin established a dividing line that sooner or later every church will have to cross.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast Sept. 26 that Tuesday’s vote by the SBC Executive Committee to exclude New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, Calif., means there is no “third way” for sidestepping the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage in the nation’s second-largest faith group.

“Division is always painful, but on a clear question of biblical truth, division is sometimes the only act that faithfulness to Scripture will allow,” Mohler said. “This is one of those moments.”

Mohler said homosexuality and same-sex marriage “now loom as the great dividing line that will certainly tear some denominations apart and will lead yet others to define the terms of their convictional cooperation.” He said that is precisely what the Executive Committee did in its unanimous vote finding that New Heart is not a Southern Baptist church.

Earlier this year the members of New Heart Community Church considered firing their pastor after he said from the pulpit he no longer believes the traditional Christian view that all same-sex relationships are inherently sinful. Instead a majority adopted a recently proposed “Third Way” solution to the impasse of neither excluding members because they are gay nor judging those who firmly believe that sexual activity is only moral in the context of marriage between a man and woman.

In correspondence with SBC officials, church leaders tried to plead a case that the congregation did not “act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior,” language in the SBC constitution and bylaws to determine whether a church is in “friendly cooperation” with the national body.

Mohler said the Executive Committee “sent a signal that the Southern Baptist Convention intends to stand without compromise on this question.”

“In other words, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, on behalf of the denomination as a whole, saw clearly the impossibility of any third way,” Mohler said.

“The issue is now inescapable not only for the SBC Executive Committee, but for every church, every denomination, every seminary, indeed every Christian organization,” Mohler said. “The question will be asked, and some answer will be given.”

“When the question is asked, any answer that is not completely consistent with the church’s historical understanding of sexual morality, and also fully consistent with the full affirmation of biblical authority, will mean a full embrace of same-sex behaviors,” he said, “if not immediately, then eventually, and also a full embrace of same-sex relationships. There is no third way, and as this sad case makes very clear, there never was.”

Mohler said another illustration of the “dividing line” nature of homosexuality came the day before the SBC Executive Committee vote, when former President Jimmy Carter, who years ago resigned his membership in the Southern Baptist Convention over differences with the denomination’s new statement of faith, answered a question about LGBT rights at a community college in Michigan by saying that Jesus never discriminated against anyone.

“That’s one of those statements that you just frankly have to unpack word-by-word,” Mohler said. “Discrimination in this case is one of the odd words that fits our contemporary political context but really doesn’t fit the Scripture. What in the world does discrimination mean in this case?”

“There is no question that Jesus Christ very consistently held up the law and held up the moral principles of the law, making clear that not one jot or tittle of the law would disappear until all had been fulfilled,”Mohler said. “Of course, he is the very one who by his active and passive obedience perfectly fulfilled the law.

“But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went so far as to make very clear that the moral law continues amongst his own people. He went so far as to argue that indeed it matters in the interior, not merely in the exterior life.”

“It’s not enough to demonstrate an external compliance with the command, such as you shall not murder or you shall not commit adultery,” Mohler said. “Jesus said not only that those moral principles of the law continue, but that now it’s not enough for his people even to have anger in the heart tantamount to murder or lust in the heart tantamount to adultery.”

“Christians have to be exceedingly careful never to try to draw any line of division between Jesus and the Scripture,” Mohler said. “Jesus said of the Old Testament scriptures, these are they that testify of me. And concerning the New Testament scriptures, he promised his own disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them not away from the truth but into truth. And that is the evangelical affirmation of the total trustworthiness and truthfulness of Scripture.”

A Southern Baptist Convention leader said Aug. 22 that a contemporary Christian music artist who recently said he no longer believes in a literal Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark trusts science more than the Bible.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast news briefing that a recent World Magazineexpose of shifting views by Dove Award-winning and Grammy-nominated musician Michael Gungor is more than “a tempest in a teapot.”

Mohler said Gungor’s problem boils down to “epistemology” — the theory of how people know — and that his words make clear that he believes science has intellectual authority to trump the teaching of Scripture.

Mohler said by categorizing Bible stories like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Flood as myth instead of history, Gungor repeats the error of Protestant liberals in the 19th century.

“When Michael Gungor speaks of his perspective shifting, what he’s actually doing is shifting into theological reverse, moving right back to the last decades of the 19th century,” Mohler said, “associating with theological ideas, which were a part of that Protestant liberalism, which also came over to the United States, infecting many denominations and seminaries.”

Mohler said it’s impossible for a person to live without deciding what intellectual authority gets to trump other claims to knowledge.

“We will either believe the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God — that it is the specially revealed word of God, which is our ultimate intellectual authority, because it is, indeed, the word of God — or we’ll see it merely as a collection of inspirational and spiritual writings that are to be ‘reinterpreted,’” Mohler said. “That’s Michael Gungor’s word, when it comes to claims of a superior intellectual authority, in his case modern science.”

Mohler said Gungor’s view “is inherently arbitrary,” because he denies the historicity of some parts of the Bible but not all.

“Michael Gungor says he can’t believe in a historical Adam and Eve any more, but he wants to make very clear he still believes in the miracles of the New Testament,” Mohler said. “But why?”

“He has just pulled the rug out from under his own intellectual argument, because if he has just allowed the naturalist assumptions of modern science to deny the reality of Adam and Eve, how can he not follow those same naturalistic claims of science when they deny the possibility of the miraculous?”

Mohler said he is not suggesting that Gungor doubts the New Testament miracles or that a person who denies one doctrine necessarily must reject other doctrines as well, but there is “theological peril” involved.

“If you decide that you’re going to undercut biblical authority when it comes to very clear historical claims that you say now have to be reinterpreted by the assured findings of modern science, then when it comes to any other issue, if you fail to follow those same, naturalistic assumptions, you’re just being arbitrary,” Mohler said.

“It may not be that you will also deny all those other doctrines that run into direct conflict with the naturalistic, scientific worldview. But if you do not do so, it will simply be because you decided not to do so, not because you are consistently recognizing an intellectual authority, and that’s exactly what the Scripture claims to be.”

Mohler said in the evangelical tradition, the formula has been “when the Bible speaks, God speaks.”

“The issue remains that simple,” Mohler said. “In reality, the fact that Adam and Eve were real, objectively live human beings, who lived in space and time and history, is essential to the entire biblical narrative, not to just the interpretation of Genesis 1 and following.”

Mohler said “one of the saddest aspects” of Gungor’s thinking is that he seems to believe he has achieved something new.

“It isn’t new,” Mohler said. “It’s just back to the future. It’s back to Protestant liberalism.

“And what, by the way, did Protestant liberalism achieve? The undermining and subversion of the church in the name of saving it, saving it from itself. We’re not called to save the Bible from itself. The Bible makes explicit truth claims. We’re not trying to save the Bible from those truth claims, but rather to receive them for what they are — the word to us, which is the word of God.”

]]>Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler says Christians aren’t supposed to save the Bible from itself by trying to harmonize its truth claims with science.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist Convention leader said Aug. 22 that a contemporary Christian music artist who recently said he no longer believes in a literal Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark trusts science more than the Bible.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast news briefing that a recent World Magazineexpose of shifting views by Dove Award-winning and Grammy-nominated musician Michael Gungor is more than “a tempest in a teapot.”

Mohler said Gungor’s problem boils down to “epistemology” — the theory of how people know — and that his words make clear that he believes science has intellectual authority to trump the teaching of Scripture.

Mohler said by categorizing Bible stories like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Flood as myth instead of history, Gungor repeats the error of Protestant liberals in the 19th century.

“When Michael Gungor speaks of his perspective shifting, what he’s actually doing is shifting into theological reverse, moving right back to the last decades of the 19th century,” Mohler said, “associating with theological ideas, which were a part of that Protestant liberalism, which also came over to the United States, infecting many denominations and seminaries.”

Mohler said it’s impossible for a person to live without deciding what intellectual authority gets to trump other claims to knowledge.

“We will either believe the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God — that it is the specially revealed word of God, which is our ultimate intellectual authority, because it is, indeed, the word of God — or we’ll see it merely as a collection of inspirational and spiritual writings that are to be ‘reinterpreted,’” Mohler said. “That’s Michael Gungor’s word, when it comes to claims of a superior intellectual authority, in his case modern science.”

Mohler said Gungor’s view “is inherently arbitrary,” because he denies the historicity of some parts of the Bible but not all.

“Michael Gungor says he can’t believe in a historical Adam and Eve any more, but he wants to make very clear he still believes in the miracles of the New Testament,” Mohler said. “But why?”

“He has just pulled the rug out from under his own intellectual argument, because if he has just allowed the naturalist assumptions of modern science to deny the reality of Adam and Eve, how can he not follow those same naturalistic claims of science when they deny the possibility of the miraculous?”

Mohler said he is not suggesting that Gungor doubts the New Testament miracles or that a person who denies one doctrine necessarily must reject other doctrines as well, but there is “theological peril” involved.

“If you decide that you’re going to undercut biblical authority when it comes to very clear historical claims that you say now have to be reinterpreted by the assured findings of modern science, then when it comes to any other issue, if you fail to follow those same, naturalistic assumptions, you’re just being arbitrary,” Mohler said.

“It may not be that you will also deny all those other doctrines that run into direct conflict with the naturalistic, scientific worldview. But if you do not do so, it will simply be because you decided not to do so, not because you are consistently recognizing an intellectual authority, and that’s exactly what the Scripture claims to be.”

Mohler said in the evangelical tradition, the formula has been “when the Bible speaks, God speaks.”

“The issue remains that simple,” Mohler said. “In reality, the fact that Adam and Eve were real, objectively live human beings, who lived in space and time and history, is essential to the entire biblical narrative, not to just the interpretation of Genesis 1 and following.”

Mohler said “one of the saddest aspects” of Gungor’s thinking is that he seems to believe he has achieved something new.

“It isn’t new,” Mohler said. “It’s just back to the future. It’s back to Protestant liberalism.

“And what, by the way, did Protestant liberalism achieve? The undermining and subversion of the church in the name of saving it, saving it from itself. We’re not called to save the Bible from itself. The Bible makes explicit truth claims. We’re not trying to save the Bible from those truth claims, but rather to receive them for what they are — the word to us, which is the word of God.”

A Southern Baptist pastor and an expert on moral policy issues made national headlines recently by suggesting that parents who encourage their adult children to delay marriage for educational and financial reasons unwittingly send a message that it’s OK for them to engage in premarital sex.

“What we’ve communicated to our young people is finances are more important than sexual sin, and the Bible seems to say the exact opposite of that,” Jon Akin, senior pastor of Fairview Church in Lebanon, Tenn., said in a story that appeared Aug. 12 in The Tennesseanand USA Today.

Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he can’t prescribe a certain age when Southern Baptists should get married, but it should be far earlier than the late 20s, the current median age for first marriages in the United States.

Akin and Walker penned a Baptist Press commentary Aug. 18 clarifying that contrary to what they believe the headlines conveyed, there is no official policy on when Southern Baptists should marry, but “there are biblical wisdom principles that should influence” when a couple makes that decision.

“Frankly, it is indeed our personal opinion that marrying earlier staves off the hormonal rush that comes with sexual temptation,” they said. “Sadly, we’ve known Southern Baptist parents who have counseled their children to delay marriage while turning a blind eye to their fornication in order to not jeopardize Suzy and Johnny’s education.”

While they do not advocate a specific age, Akin and Walker said they believe that young people should make themselves “marry-able” at a younger age.

“They need to push against the cultural norm that extends adolescence for an indefinite period of time and reach maturity more quickly so they can be ready for marriage sooner than the national average,” they said.

The duo said there are both theological and practical reasons for marrying sooner rather than later. For one thing, they said, the Bible teaches that God designed men and women to be married, suggesting marriage is a “foundation for life” rather than a “capstone” event.

“The Bible condemns pre-marital sex as sinful and a violation of God’s design for sex in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman for life,” they said. “It is impractical and unhelpful to advise and encourage young men and women who reach sexual maturity at the age of 12 or 13 to wait 15 years before marriage and still remain pure.”

Akin and Walker aren’t the first evangelical thinkers to challenge conventional wisdom discouraging young adults from marrying right out of high school or college.

Mark Regnerus, a University of Texas sociologist who spoke at an April ERLC summit on the gospel and sexuality and is scheduled to return to Nashville Oct. 27-29 for national conference on “The Gospel, Homosexuality and the Future of Marriage,” wrote a Washington Postop-ed in April 2009 titled “Freedom to Marry Young.”

Regnerus described a “nearly universal hostile reaction” to the column in a Christianity Todayarticle titled “The Case for Early Marriage.”

“If you think it's difficult to be pro-life in a pro-choice world, or to be a disciple of Jesus in a sea of skeptics, try advocating for young marriage,” Regnerus said in the Christianity Today article dated July 31, 2009. “Almost no one empathizes, even among the faithful.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., made a similar argument even earlier. Speaking in 2004 at a conference sponsored by Sovereign Grace Ministries and hosted by Joshua Harris, pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and author of the 2003 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Mohler said males as young as 17 should already be thinking about marriage.

Mohler described a younger generation beset with “the sin of delaying marriage as a lifestyle option among those who intend someday to get married but they just haven't yet." By putting off marriage later and later, Mohler said, “We have created this incredible span of time where sexual passion is ignited but there is no holy means for it to be fulfilled.”

“Guys, you know how tough it is to live with this,” Mohler said. “From the time you were very, very young when sexual maturity came to you there is in you a drive and a passion that does not long sleep. It is going to be for you an occasion to sin or an occasion to get serious about getting married.”

Mohler said 13 or 14 is too young to “pop the question,” but “if you’re 17, 18, 19, 20 or in your early 20s, what are you waiting for?”

“I don’t mean to get married this weekend,” he said. “I mean to look for the spouse God has given you.”

Akin and Walker said in a denomination as large and diverse as the Southern Baptist Convention, everyone is not going to agree with their point of view. They said that is likely true even within their own churches.

“The question of when a couple is ready for marriage is one that requires wisdom and discernment for each person considering marriage and, ideally, the involvement of a local church that seeks to shape and influence potential spouses in a way that prioritizes and mirrors the gospel in covenantal fidelity,” they concluded.

]]>True love waits, but don’t expect it to wait forever, a Southern Baptist pastor and policy expert advised in a recent newspaper story arguing that couples should consider marrying at a younger age.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist pastor and an expert on moral policy issues made national headlines recently by suggesting that parents who encourage their adult children to delay marriage for educational and financial reasons unwittingly send a message that it’s OK for them to engage in premarital sex.

“What we’ve communicated to our young people is finances are more important than sexual sin, and the Bible seems to say the exact opposite of that,” Jon Akin, senior pastor of Fairview Church in Lebanon, Tenn., said in a story that appeared Aug. 12 in The Tennesseanand USA Today.

Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he can’t prescribe a certain age when Southern Baptists should get married, but it should be far earlier than the late 20s, the current median age for first marriages in the United States.

Akin and Walker penned a Baptist Press commentary Aug. 18 clarifying that contrary to what they believe the headlines conveyed, there is no official policy on when Southern Baptists should marry, but “there are biblical wisdom principles that should influence” when a couple makes that decision.

“Frankly, it is indeed our personal opinion that marrying earlier staves off the hormonal rush that comes with sexual temptation,” they said. “Sadly, we’ve known Southern Baptist parents who have counseled their children to delay marriage while turning a blind eye to their fornication in order to not jeopardize Suzy and Johnny’s education.”

While they do not advocate a specific age, Akin and Walker said they believe that young people should make themselves “marry-able” at a younger age.

“They need to push against the cultural norm that extends adolescence for an indefinite period of time and reach maturity more quickly so they can be ready for marriage sooner than the national average,” they said.

The duo said there are both theological and practical reasons for marrying sooner rather than later. For one thing, they said, the Bible teaches that God designed men and women to be married, suggesting marriage is a “foundation for life” rather than a “capstone” event.

“The Bible condemns pre-marital sex as sinful and a violation of God’s design for sex in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman for life,” they said. “It is impractical and unhelpful to advise and encourage young men and women who reach sexual maturity at the age of 12 or 13 to wait 15 years before marriage and still remain pure.”

Akin and Walker aren’t the first evangelical thinkers to challenge conventional wisdom discouraging young adults from marrying right out of high school or college.

Mark Regnerus, a University of Texas sociologist who spoke at an April ERLC summit on the gospel and sexuality and is scheduled to return to Nashville Oct. 27-29 for national conference on “The Gospel, Homosexuality and the Future of Marriage,” wrote a Washington Postop-ed in April 2009 titled “Freedom to Marry Young.”

Regnerus described a “nearly universal hostile reaction” to the column in a Christianity Todayarticle titled “The Case for Early Marriage.”

“If you think it's difficult to be pro-life in a pro-choice world, or to be a disciple of Jesus in a sea of skeptics, try advocating for young marriage,” Regnerus said in the Christianity Today article dated July 31, 2009. “Almost no one empathizes, even among the faithful.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., made a similar argument even earlier. Speaking in 2004 at a conference sponsored by Sovereign Grace Ministries and hosted by Joshua Harris, pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and author of the 2003 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Mohler said males as young as 17 should already be thinking about marriage.

Mohler described a younger generation beset with “the sin of delaying marriage as a lifestyle option among those who intend someday to get married but they just haven't yet." By putting off marriage later and later, Mohler said, “We have created this incredible span of time where sexual passion is ignited but there is no holy means for it to be fulfilled.”

“Guys, you know how tough it is to live with this,” Mohler said. “From the time you were very, very young when sexual maturity came to you there is in you a drive and a passion that does not long sleep. It is going to be for you an occasion to sin or an occasion to get serious about getting married.”

Mohler said 13 or 14 is too young to “pop the question,” but “if you’re 17, 18, 19, 20 or in your early 20s, what are you waiting for?”

“I don’t mean to get married this weekend,” he said. “I mean to look for the spouse God has given you.”

Akin and Walker said in a denomination as large and diverse as the Southern Baptist Convention, everyone is not going to agree with their point of view. They said that is likely true even within their own churches.

“The question of when a couple is ready for marriage is one that requires wisdom and discernment for each person considering marriage and, ideally, the involvement of a local church that seeks to shape and influence potential spouses in a way that prioritizes and mirrors the gospel in covenantal fidelity,” they concluded.

A Southern Baptist leader criticized for supporting a ministry colleague accused of covering up child sex abuse advised pastors June 10 to immediately dial 911 at the first report of any abuse.

“Know beforehand that if you get any report of any kind of sexual abuse — certainly involving a minor — you be committed before that ever happens, that before you leave that room you are going to dial 911 and you’re going to call for help,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said during a panel discussion between sessions of the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Baltimore.

“We’re not in the position of being able to be investigative agents,” Mohler said. “That’s not our job at that level. There are young people, the vulnerable, to be protected, and you need to call.”

“If you’re not doing that, you’re not only putting those children at risk, you’re putting your entire ministry at risk,” Mohler continued. “Call. Let the authorities start to sort it out.”

“That doesn’t mean that you don’t exercise pastoral ministry and church discipline, but those are your responsibility after you have called 911, and they are a big responsibility,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is create safe places where people can come and report this kind of thing knowing that we’re going to respond in the right way.”

“This is something that churches have had to learn,” Mohler continued. “You go back 30 years, 20 years, churches didn’t know what to do in this kind of situation. We’re in a different situation now. There’s no excuse right now for not knowing what you’re going to do before you have to do it. It is a gospel ministry stewardship imperative. Be ready to dial 911, and do so before you leave the room.”

Mohler’s comments came near the end of a wide-ranging discussion of issues facing the Southern Baptist Convention sponsored by Baptist 21, an unofficial group formed in 2008 in hopes of affirming and re-energizing Baptist convictions among recent seminary graduates.

Panel moderator Jon Akin, one of the founding members of B21, asked Mohler what advice he would give pastors in light of a recent criminal trial involving a church formerly associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries.

Nathaniel “Nate” Morales was convicted May 15 of sexually abusing three boys between 1983 and 1991 while volunteering as a youth group leader at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

A separate civil lawsuit currently under appeal alleges a conspiracy to cover up ongoing sexual abuse of children by leaders in Sovereign Grace Ministries. A plaintiff in the lawsuit was among a half-dozen protestors gathered outside the Baltimore Convention Center June 11 calling for an independent review of clergy abuse and cover-ups in Southern Baptist churches.

“Major leaders within the SBC have publicly supported C.J. Mahaney, my former senior pastor, now in the midst of what has been called by some in the media as the largest sex abuse scandal in the evangelical church,” plaintiff Pam Palmer said in a statement. “My daughter is just one of the many sex abuse victims from SGM under Mahaney’s watch.”

“In recent years Southern Baptist seminaries and related conferences, such as T4G [Together for the Gospel], have invited Mahaney to come and teach, while his denomination [SGM] has become embroiled in multiple court cases related to cover-up of sex abuse,” Palmer said.

Palmer said she believes that Southern Baptist leaders who continue to identify with Mahaney are in “direct violation” of a resolution passed at last year’s SBC annual meeting in Houston encouraging “all denominational leaders and employees of the Southern Baptist Convention to utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliating with groups and or individuals that possess questionable policies and practices in protecting our children from criminal abuse.”

Susan Burke, the attorney representing 11 plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit said on the "Janet Mefferd Show" June 6 that pastors of Covenant Life Church “knew of various instances of sexual abuse” reported by alleged victims.

“They knew they had a duty to report it to the police,” Burke said. “They discussed with each other whether or not to do so, and they reached an agreement. They collectively decided that they were going to cover it up rather than bring it forward to the secular authorities. They took steps to encourage anyone who learned of it to do the same.”

During the criminal trial, former Covenant Life Church pastor Grant Layman testified that he believes he had an obligation to report abuse allegations against Morales but did not do so.

“We now have sworn testimony from one of the defendants admitting what we alleged in the complaint,” Burke said.

That will have no bearing, however, in the question before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals: whether a statute of limitations on civil action began when the conspiracy occurred or when the plaintiffs learned about it in 2011. She said a decision on the outcome will probably take months and that if she loses she plans to continue appeals until all options are exhausted.

Burke said lawyers are also in the process of assessing new allegations for a lawsuit to be filed in the “relatively near future” in Virginia on behalf of plaintiffs dismissed in the original lawsuit due to lack of jurisdiction.

Mahaney proclaimed his innocence with a statement in May, saying: “I have never conspired to protect a child predator, and I also deny all the claims made against me in the civil suit.”

Asked about Mahaney’s denial, Burke told Mefferd: “If you look at the contrast between what C.J. Mahaney and the various church leaders have stated about flat denial, and then you look at the sworn, under-oath testimony that came out in the Morales trial, you see a clear discrepancy.”

“We are hopeful we will get to a trial, in which case all the testimony will be under oath, and we believe that we have the evidence needed to prevail,” Burke said.

Mohler, Mahaney and two other preachers co-founded Together for the Gospel, a biennial preaching conference popular with a new Calvinist movement that goes by names including “young, restless and reformed.”

Mahaney did not speak at this year’s gathering, saying he did not want attention to the lawsuit to be a distraction, but was photographed at the event seated alongside program participants on the front row.

Last year Mohler joined Together for the Gospel co-founders Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan in a statement that appeared briefly on the ministry website vouching for Mahaney’s “personal integrity” in light of the lawsuit allegations.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” the statement said. “No such accusation of direct wrongdoing was ever made against C. J. Mahaney. Instead, he was charged with founding a ministry and for teaching doctrines and principles that are held to be true by vast millions of American evangelicals.”

]]>A seminary president says Southern Baptists have faced a learning curve about how to properly handle the reporting of child sexual abuse.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist leader criticized for supporting a ministry colleague accused of covering up child sex abuse advised pastors June 10 to immediately dial 911 at the first report of any abuse.

“Know beforehand that if you get any report of any kind of sexual abuse — certainly involving a minor — you be committed before that ever happens, that before you leave that room you are going to dial 911 and you’re going to call for help,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said during a panel discussion between sessions of the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Baltimore.

“We’re not in the position of being able to be investigative agents,” Mohler said. “That’s not our job at that level. There are young people, the vulnerable, to be protected, and you need to call.”

“If you’re not doing that, you’re not only putting those children at risk, you’re putting your entire ministry at risk,” Mohler continued. “Call. Let the authorities start to sort it out.”

“That doesn’t mean that you don’t exercise pastoral ministry and church discipline, but those are your responsibility after you have called 911, and they are a big responsibility,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is create safe places where people can come and report this kind of thing knowing that we’re going to respond in the right way.”

“This is something that churches have had to learn,” Mohler continued. “You go back 30 years, 20 years, churches didn’t know what to do in this kind of situation. We’re in a different situation now. There’s no excuse right now for not knowing what you’re going to do before you have to do it. It is a gospel ministry stewardship imperative. Be ready to dial 911, and do so before you leave the room.”

Mohler’s comments came near the end of a wide-ranging discussion of issues facing the Southern Baptist Convention sponsored by Baptist 21, an unofficial group formed in 2008 in hopes of affirming and re-energizing Baptist convictions among recent seminary graduates.

Panel moderator Jon Akin, one of the founding members of B21, asked Mohler what advice he would give pastors in light of a recent criminal trial involving a church formerly associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries.

Nathaniel “Nate” Morales was convicted May 15 of sexually abusing three boys between 1983 and 1991 while volunteering as a youth group leader at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

A separate civil lawsuit currently under appeal alleges a conspiracy to cover up ongoing sexual abuse of children by leaders in Sovereign Grace Ministries. A plaintiff in the lawsuit was among a half-dozen protestors gathered outside the Baltimore Convention Center June 11 calling for an independent review of clergy abuse and cover-ups in Southern Baptist churches.

“Major leaders within the SBC have publicly supported C.J. Mahaney, my former senior pastor, now in the midst of what has been called by some in the media as the largest sex abuse scandal in the evangelical church,” plaintiff Pam Palmer said in a statement. “My daughter is just one of the many sex abuse victims from SGM under Mahaney’s watch.”

“In recent years Southern Baptist seminaries and related conferences, such as T4G [Together for the Gospel], have invited Mahaney to come and teach, while his denomination [SGM] has become embroiled in multiple court cases related to cover-up of sex abuse,” Palmer said.

Palmer said she believes that Southern Baptist leaders who continue to identify with Mahaney are in “direct violation” of a resolution passed at last year’s SBC annual meeting in Houston encouraging “all denominational leaders and employees of the Southern Baptist Convention to utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliating with groups and or individuals that possess questionable policies and practices in protecting our children from criminal abuse.”

Susan Burke, the attorney representing 11 plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit said on the "Janet Mefferd Show" June 6 that pastors of Covenant Life Church “knew of various instances of sexual abuse” reported by alleged victims.

“They knew they had a duty to report it to the police,” Burke said. “They discussed with each other whether or not to do so, and they reached an agreement. They collectively decided that they were going to cover it up rather than bring it forward to the secular authorities. They took steps to encourage anyone who learned of it to do the same.”

During the criminal trial, former Covenant Life Church pastor Grant Layman testified that he believes he had an obligation to report abuse allegations against Morales but did not do so.

“We now have sworn testimony from one of the defendants admitting what we alleged in the complaint,” Burke said.

That will have no bearing, however, in the question before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals: whether a statute of limitations on civil action began when the conspiracy occurred or when the plaintiffs learned about it in 2011. She said a decision on the outcome will probably take months and that if she loses she plans to continue appeals until all options are exhausted.

Burke said lawyers are also in the process of assessing new allegations for a lawsuit to be filed in the “relatively near future” in Virginia on behalf of plaintiffs dismissed in the original lawsuit due to lack of jurisdiction.

Mahaney proclaimed his innocence with a statement in May, saying: “I have never conspired to protect a child predator, and I also deny all the claims made against me in the civil suit.”

Asked about Mahaney’s denial, Burke told Mefferd: “If you look at the contrast between what C.J. Mahaney and the various church leaders have stated about flat denial, and then you look at the sworn, under-oath testimony that came out in the Morales trial, you see a clear discrepancy.”

“We are hopeful we will get to a trial, in which case all the testimony will be under oath, and we believe that we have the evidence needed to prevail,” Burke said.

Mohler, Mahaney and two other preachers co-founded Together for the Gospel, a biennial preaching conference popular with a new Calvinist movement that goes by names including “young, restless and reformed.”

Mahaney did not speak at this year’s gathering, saying he did not want attention to the lawsuit to be a distraction, but was photographed at the event seated alongside program participants on the front row.

Last year Mohler joined Together for the Gospel co-founders Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan in a statement that appeared briefly on the ministry website vouching for Mahaney’s “personal integrity” in light of the lawsuit allegations.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” the statement said. “No such accusation of direct wrongdoing was ever made against C. J. Mahaney. Instead, he was charged with founding a ministry and for teaching doctrines and principles that are held to be true by vast millions of American evangelicals.”

]]>Bob AllenOrganizationsMon, 16 Jun 2014 14:32:13 -0400Mohler says Christ died only for the ‘elect’http://baptistnews.com/faith/theology/item/28657-mohler-says-christ-died-for-the-elect
http://baptistnews.com/faith/theology/item/28657-mohler-says-christ-died-for-the-electAlbert Mohler, a proponent of a Calvinist resurgence in Southern Baptist life, explains one of the movement’s most controversial doctrines.

By Bob Allen

Christ died not as a substitute for all sinners but only for those predestined to believe, a leading Southern Baptist Calvinist said in a weekend podcast explaining the atonement, a Christian doctrine that describes how sinners are reconciled to God.

“As I understand God’s Word, if Jesus truly died for the sins of all mankind, if even one of those persons ends up in hell, then that would make a mockery of the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning blood on Calvary’s cross,” said a caller to Albert Mohler’s “Ask Anything” weekend edition of his daily news podcast May 3. “Could you help me on this subject, please?”

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said Bible verses like “God so loved the world” in John 3:16 and “for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” in I Corinthians 15:22 illustrate that Calvinists and Arminians are not as far apart as many assume.

“If you read ‘world’ and ‘all’ to mean that Christ’s saving work is applied to the world and to all within in it on the same basis, then all are saved,” Mohler said, “and that clearly isn’t consistent with Scripture.”

“Christ’s death has meaning for every single life, but salvation comes to those who are confessing with their lips that Jesus is Lord and believing in their heart that God has raised him from the dead,” he said.

“Limited atonement” is generally accepted as most the controversial of five points affirmed by Calvinist or Reformed theology. The theological view was advocated by 16th-century theologian John Calvin and emphasizes predestination and downplays human agency in salvation.

Also called “definite redemption” or “definite atonement,” limited atonement denies that God would send his son to die for everyone with the possibility that none might repent. Rather, it claims that God’s eternal plan was to redeem specific sinners through the atoning work of Christ.

The traditional counterview, “Arminianism,” popular in Methodist and Freewill Baptist traditions and named for Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, contends that faith is the product of human free will, and thereby God’s saving grace must be offered equally to everyone.

Mohler, a leader in the “young, restless and reformed” neo-Calvinism popular in evangelical circles including pockets of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the language of Scripture “goes far beyond” the question of how far the atonement extends.

“Both Calvinists and Arminians are put in the position, if we are intellectually and biblically honest, of saying we’re going to have to read the word ‘world’ here one way and a different way somewhere else,” Mohler said. “We’re going to have to read the word ‘all’ here one way and the word ‘all’ somewhere else in a different text differently.”

“So the question of the extent of the atonement is one that I, as one committed to reformed theology, would answer in the terms of the fact that Christ died for those he has redeemed, and would be very clear about that, in terms of particular redemption,” Mohler said.

“But I would never classify someone who holds to a different understanding of the extent of the atonement, within the context of Christian orthodoxy, as a heresy,” he continued. “In other words, I would gladly preach the gospel alongside those who would argue for a different understanding of the extent of the atonement, or a general atonement, so long as they hold to the belief that salvation comes only to those who confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their heart that God has raised him from the dead, in other words who come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohler said neither Calvinists nor Arminians are universalists.

“Neither of us believes the ‘all’ means that everybody is going to be saved,” he said. “None of us believes that when we talk about the world we mean that every single person in the world is going to be saved.”

Mohler said neither actually believes that Christ’s death is of benefit only to the redeemed.

"Actually all Christians, all biblical and orthodox Christians, believe that the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ has an effect of some benefit to all people everywhere, if for nothing else than the restraint of sin and the allowance of a period of time for preaching the gospel,” Mohler said.

“And yet all biblical Christians, regardless of how we may debate the extent of the atonement in terms of a general or a particular redemption, we hold to the fact that salvation comes not to all of those but only to those who come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Some Southern Baptists fear the renewed interest in Calvinism is potentially divisive, particularly in cases where pastoral candidates are less than forthcoming about their views until after they are hired. A blue-ribbon study in 2013 found “points of tension” between the two groups but said it need not divide Southern Baptists in the same way that biblical inerrancy did in the closing decades of the 20th century.

]]>Albert Mohler, a proponent of a Calvinist resurgence in Southern Baptist life, explains one of the movement’s most controversial doctrines.

By Bob Allen

Christ died not as a substitute for all sinners but only for those predestined to believe, a leading Southern Baptist Calvinist said in a weekend podcast explaining the atonement, a Christian doctrine that describes how sinners are reconciled to God.

“As I understand God’s Word, if Jesus truly died for the sins of all mankind, if even one of those persons ends up in hell, then that would make a mockery of the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning blood on Calvary’s cross,” said a caller to Albert Mohler’s “Ask Anything” weekend edition of his daily news podcast May 3. “Could you help me on this subject, please?”

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said Bible verses like “God so loved the world” in John 3:16 and “for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” in I Corinthians 15:22 illustrate that Calvinists and Arminians are not as far apart as many assume.

“If you read ‘world’ and ‘all’ to mean that Christ’s saving work is applied to the world and to all within in it on the same basis, then all are saved,” Mohler said, “and that clearly isn’t consistent with Scripture.”

“Christ’s death has meaning for every single life, but salvation comes to those who are confessing with their lips that Jesus is Lord and believing in their heart that God has raised him from the dead,” he said.

“Limited atonement” is generally accepted as most the controversial of five points affirmed by Calvinist or Reformed theology. The theological view was advocated by 16th-century theologian John Calvin and emphasizes predestination and downplays human agency in salvation.

Also called “definite redemption” or “definite atonement,” limited atonement denies that God would send his son to die for everyone with the possibility that none might repent. Rather, it claims that God’s eternal plan was to redeem specific sinners through the atoning work of Christ.

The traditional counterview, “Arminianism,” popular in Methodist and Freewill Baptist traditions and named for Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, contends that faith is the product of human free will, and thereby God’s saving grace must be offered equally to everyone.

Mohler, a leader in the “young, restless and reformed” neo-Calvinism popular in evangelical circles including pockets of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the language of Scripture “goes far beyond” the question of how far the atonement extends.

“Both Calvinists and Arminians are put in the position, if we are intellectually and biblically honest, of saying we’re going to have to read the word ‘world’ here one way and a different way somewhere else,” Mohler said. “We’re going to have to read the word ‘all’ here one way and the word ‘all’ somewhere else in a different text differently.”

“So the question of the extent of the atonement is one that I, as one committed to reformed theology, would answer in the terms of the fact that Christ died for those he has redeemed, and would be very clear about that, in terms of particular redemption,” Mohler said.

“But I would never classify someone who holds to a different understanding of the extent of the atonement, within the context of Christian orthodoxy, as a heresy,” he continued. “In other words, I would gladly preach the gospel alongside those who would argue for a different understanding of the extent of the atonement, or a general atonement, so long as they hold to the belief that salvation comes only to those who confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their heart that God has raised him from the dead, in other words who come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohler said neither Calvinists nor Arminians are universalists.

“Neither of us believes the ‘all’ means that everybody is going to be saved,” he said. “None of us believes that when we talk about the world we mean that every single person in the world is going to be saved.”

Mohler said neither actually believes that Christ’s death is of benefit only to the redeemed.

"Actually all Christians, all biblical and orthodox Christians, believe that the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ has an effect of some benefit to all people everywhere, if for nothing else than the restraint of sin and the allowance of a period of time for preaching the gospel,” Mohler said.

“And yet all biblical Christians, regardless of how we may debate the extent of the atonement in terms of a general or a particular redemption, we hold to the fact that salvation comes not to all of those but only to those who come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Some Southern Baptists fear the renewed interest in Calvinism is potentially divisive, particularly in cases where pastoral candidates are less than forthcoming about their views until after they are hired. A blue-ribbon study in 2013 found “points of tension” between the two groups but said it need not divide Southern Baptists in the same way that biblical inerrancy did in the closing decades of the 20th century.

World Vision U.S. President Richard StearnstoldChristianity Today the parachurch group’s American branch is changing its employee conduct policy to allow a professing Christian who is legally married to someone of the same sex. He said the policy is consistent with the ministry’s standard of “abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.”

Stearns said it’s an attempt to stay neutral on the controversial issue of same-sex marriage, which is tearing apart many American denominations and churches.

“World Vision is a good thing to have, unless the world is all you can see,” quipped Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in an article on the ERLC website.

“At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Moore said. “If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2,000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it’s what happens when a charity tries to expand its donor base to include organizations that disagree about essentials of the Christian faith.

“If you’re going to define Christianity in such a way that it involves everyone that may call themselves a Christian church or denomination, if you’re going to extend your employment pool and your donor base to that kind of broad and comprehensive understanding and identity, then you are going to be accepting many things that are theologically incompatible with the Christian faith,” Mohler said in a podcast March 25.

“This is not the same kind of issue as talking about the debate between egalitarians and complementarians in the church,” said Mohler, who has a Ph.D. in theology. “This is not the same kind of debate as the conversation about divorce and remarriage. Here we are talking about the radical redefinition of marriage in our time, which is all about the normalization of homosexuality as a sexual behavior.”

“Stearns says that ‘every employee’ must be a ‘follower of Jesus Christ’ even as he affirms that some of his employees will be living in open immorality,” Burk wrote in a blog dated March 25. “What does this mean? It can only mean that he believes being a ‘follower of Jesus Christ’ is somehow compatible with being in a same-sex marriage.”

“Following Christ is not a choose-your-own-adventure story,” Burk said. “King Jesus defines the terms of our discipleship. He is very clear that there is a narrow path that leads to life and a broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). The path of sexual immorality — including same-sex immorality — goes along the broad path (Mark 7:21; Rom. 1:26-27). Thus it is impossible to be a ‘follower of Christ’ while endorsing or participating in a same-sex marriage.”

Mohler said in his blog March 25 that references by Stearns to “brothers and sisters in Christ” and of “building the kingdom,” beg the question of what and whose “kingdom” he is talking about.

Mohler quoted First Corinthians 6:9-10: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

“The leader of World Vision U.S. now claims that the Bible is not sufficiently clear on the sinfulness of same-sex sexuality and relationships, but he also claims a ‘mission of building the kingdom,’” Mohler said. “The Apostle Paul makes homosexuality a kingdom issue, and he does so in the clearest of terms.”

Mohler said the worst aspect of the policy shift “is the fact that it will mislead the world about the reality of sin and the urgent need of salvation.”

“Willingly recognizing same-sex marriage and validating openly homosexual employees in their homosexuality is a grave and tragic act that confirms sinners in their sin,” he said, “and that is an act that violates the gospel of Christ.”

Moore said on one level the new policy isn’t surprising, because, “The constellation of parachurch evangelical ministries founded after World War II have been running headlong, with some notable exceptions, toward the very mainline liberalism to which they were founded as alternatives.”

“We’re entering an era where we will see who the evangelicals really are, and by that I mean those who believe in the gospel itself, in all of its truth and all of its grace,” Moore said. “And many will shrink back.”

“There’s an entire corps of people out there who make their living off of evangelicals but who are wanting to ‘evolve’ on the sexuality issue without alienating their base,” Moore said. “I don’t mind people switching sides and standing up for things that they believe in. But just be honest about what you want to do. Don’t say ‘Hath God said?’ and then tell us you’re doing it to advance the gospel and the unity of the church.”

World Vision U.S. President Richard StearnstoldChristianity Today the parachurch group’s American branch is changing its employee conduct policy to allow a professing Christian who is legally married to someone of the same sex. He said the policy is consistent with the ministry’s standard of “abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.”

Stearns said it’s an attempt to stay neutral on the controversial issue of same-sex marriage, which is tearing apart many American denominations and churches.

“World Vision is a good thing to have, unless the world is all you can see,” quipped Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in an article on the ERLC website.

“At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Moore said. “If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2,000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it’s what happens when a charity tries to expand its donor base to include organizations that disagree about essentials of the Christian faith.

“If you’re going to define Christianity in such a way that it involves everyone that may call themselves a Christian church or denomination, if you’re going to extend your employment pool and your donor base to that kind of broad and comprehensive understanding and identity, then you are going to be accepting many things that are theologically incompatible with the Christian faith,” Mohler said in a podcast March 25.

“This is not the same kind of issue as talking about the debate between egalitarians and complementarians in the church,” said Mohler, who has a Ph.D. in theology. “This is not the same kind of debate as the conversation about divorce and remarriage. Here we are talking about the radical redefinition of marriage in our time, which is all about the normalization of homosexuality as a sexual behavior.”

“Stearns says that ‘every employee’ must be a ‘follower of Jesus Christ’ even as he affirms that some of his employees will be living in open immorality,” Burk wrote in a blog dated March 25. “What does this mean? It can only mean that he believes being a ‘follower of Jesus Christ’ is somehow compatible with being in a same-sex marriage.”

“Following Christ is not a choose-your-own-adventure story,” Burk said. “King Jesus defines the terms of our discipleship. He is very clear that there is a narrow path that leads to life and a broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). The path of sexual immorality — including same-sex immorality — goes along the broad path (Mark 7:21; Rom. 1:26-27). Thus it is impossible to be a ‘follower of Christ’ while endorsing or participating in a same-sex marriage.”

Mohler said in his blog March 25 that references by Stearns to “brothers and sisters in Christ” and of “building the kingdom,” beg the question of what and whose “kingdom” he is talking about.

Mohler quoted First Corinthians 6:9-10: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

“The leader of World Vision U.S. now claims that the Bible is not sufficiently clear on the sinfulness of same-sex sexuality and relationships, but he also claims a ‘mission of building the kingdom,’” Mohler said. “The Apostle Paul makes homosexuality a kingdom issue, and he does so in the clearest of terms.”

Mohler said the worst aspect of the policy shift “is the fact that it will mislead the world about the reality of sin and the urgent need of salvation.”

“Willingly recognizing same-sex marriage and validating openly homosexual employees in their homosexuality is a grave and tragic act that confirms sinners in their sin,” he said, “and that is an act that violates the gospel of Christ.”

Moore said on one level the new policy isn’t surprising, because, “The constellation of parachurch evangelical ministries founded after World War II have been running headlong, with some notable exceptions, toward the very mainline liberalism to which they were founded as alternatives.”

“We’re entering an era where we will see who the evangelicals really are, and by that I mean those who believe in the gospel itself, in all of its truth and all of its grace,” Moore said. “And many will shrink back.”

“There’s an entire corps of people out there who make their living off of evangelicals but who are wanting to ‘evolve’ on the sexuality issue without alienating their base,” Moore said. “I don’t mind people switching sides and standing up for things that they believe in. But just be honest about what you want to do. Don’t say ‘Hath God said?’ and then tell us you’re doing it to advance the gospel and the unity of the church.”

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesTue, 25 Mar 2014 14:35:00 -0400Mohler: America more pro-life than in 1973http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/28263-mohler-america-more-pro-life-than-in-1973
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/28263-mohler-america-more-pro-life-than-in-1973A Southern Baptist seminary president and theologian says while culture has drifted away from traditional values on a number of moral issues, America is arguably more divided on abortion than when the Supreme Court legalized it on Jan. 22, 1973.

By Bob Allen

Forty-one years after Roe v. Wade, America is arguably more divided over abortion than in 1973, a Southern Baptist seminary president and theologian observed on the Jan. 22 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that reproductive choice is a private matter between a woman and her doctor.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in his Wednesday news briefing podcast that abortion stands as “one great exception” to American culture’s “great moral shift” away from traditional values.

Mohler, who also serves as the Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Convention seminary in Louisville, Ky., said most Americans hadn’t really thought about the issue of abortion prior to the 7-2 Supreme Court decision handed down Jan. 22, 1973, that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“And, to our great shame, that included the vast majority of American evangelicals,” Mohler said. “As a matter of fact, up into the mid-1970s most evangelicals sought not to be involved with the issue.”

“As with the birth control issue, evangelicals made a hasty mistake deciding that this must be a Catholic issue,” Mohler said. “And to their credit, Roman Catholics were largely those who populated the pro-life movement in the 1960s up to the mid-point of the 1970s.”

Mohler said that all changed in the last five years of the 1970s, as “evangelicals became awakened to the issue of the sanctity of human life.”

“This came in the context of other cultural and moral changes as well,” he explained. “This came in the context of an increased understanding of what was happening in America with the rise of no-fault divorce, with the largely universal reality of the birth-control culture, with the understanding that children themselves were being devalued and the family was being marginalized.”

“But it was the understanding of the moral status of the baby in the womb that helped to awaken evangelicals to the great threat to the sanctity of every single human life that legal abortion then represented,” he said.

Mohler said abortion first became a political issue in the 1980 presidential election and has remained important in U.S. politics ever since, up to and including the upcoming mid-term elections in 2014.

Mohler said Americans today tend to be more opposed to late-term abortions than to those performed in the first three months of pregnancy.

“The Christian world view reminds us that very single human life is fully human, fully sacred, fully deserving of our protection, from the moment of conception until natural death,” he said. “At every moment of human development that human life is equally sacred and deserves our full and equal protection.”

]]>A Southern Baptist seminary president and theologian says while culture has drifted away from traditional values on a number of moral issues, America is arguably more divided on abortion than when the Supreme Court legalized it on Jan. 22, 1973.

By Bob Allen

Forty-one years after Roe v. Wade, America is arguably more divided over abortion than in 1973, a Southern Baptist seminary president and theologian observed on the Jan. 22 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that reproductive choice is a private matter between a woman and her doctor.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in his Wednesday news briefing podcast that abortion stands as “one great exception” to American culture’s “great moral shift” away from traditional values.

Mohler, who also serves as the Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Convention seminary in Louisville, Ky., said most Americans hadn’t really thought about the issue of abortion prior to the 7-2 Supreme Court decision handed down Jan. 22, 1973, that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“And, to our great shame, that included the vast majority of American evangelicals,” Mohler said. “As a matter of fact, up into the mid-1970s most evangelicals sought not to be involved with the issue.”

“As with the birth control issue, evangelicals made a hasty mistake deciding that this must be a Catholic issue,” Mohler said. “And to their credit, Roman Catholics were largely those who populated the pro-life movement in the 1960s up to the mid-point of the 1970s.”

Mohler said that all changed in the last five years of the 1970s, as “evangelicals became awakened to the issue of the sanctity of human life.”

“This came in the context of other cultural and moral changes as well,” he explained. “This came in the context of an increased understanding of what was happening in America with the rise of no-fault divorce, with the largely universal reality of the birth-control culture, with the understanding that children themselves were being devalued and the family was being marginalized.”

“But it was the understanding of the moral status of the baby in the womb that helped to awaken evangelicals to the great threat to the sanctity of every single human life that legal abortion then represented,” he said.

Mohler said abortion first became a political issue in the 1980 presidential election and has remained important in U.S. politics ever since, up to and including the upcoming mid-term elections in 2014.

Mohler said Americans today tend to be more opposed to late-term abortions than to those performed in the first three months of pregnancy.

“The Christian world view reminds us that very single human life is fully human, fully sacred, fully deserving of our protection, from the moment of conception until natural death,” he said. “At every moment of human development that human life is equally sacred and deserves our full and equal protection.”

The top official for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma quickly denounced a federal judge’s Jan. 14 ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Terence Kern of the Northern District of Oklahoma said in a 68-page ruling that a 2004 amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman and denying recognition of same-sex marriages performed in another state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against a class of citizens because of their sexual orientation.

Anthony Jordan, executive director of the 1,800-church Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said in a statement released through the Baptist Messenger, the ruling “flies in the face of the biblical and historical meaning of marriage, the wisdom of the ages and the resounding democratic choice of the people of this great state.”

Oklahoma voters approved the marriage amendment in a ballot measure in November 2004 by a 76 percent to 24 percent margin. Similar initiatives were adopted the same year in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah.

Numerous Southern Baptist Convention leaders in comments to Baptist Press called the 2004 election a win for traditional morality and a tribute to the success of the iVoteValues.com initiative led by then-Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission head Richard Land.

But Judge Kern, nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton, said the Oklahoma law results in “intentional discrimination” against same-sex couples because it “was adopted at least in part because of, and not merely in spite of, its discriminatory effect on a particular class of persons.”

The judge said not all intentional discrimination by a state violates equal protection principles, but it must have a “rational” purpose.

“The court recognizes that moral disapproval often stems from deeply held religious convictions,” Kern wrote. “However, moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification for a law.”

Kern recognized “that Oklahoma has a legitimate interest” in upholding the institution of marriage to increase the likelihood that children will be born into a stable home and because those born out of wedlock often create a financial burden on the state. He failed to see, however, how the “exclusion of the disadvantaged group from state-sanctioned marriage” advances that interest.

While procreation is one purpose of marriage, as the state argued, Kern said it is not the only one. There is no requirement for heterosexual couples to have children, he said, and same-sex couples, while not able to “naturally procreate,” can and do have children by other means.

He also questioned the state’s premise that allowing gay couples to wed undermines the “ideal” family unit, defined as “a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

“Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country,” the judge observed.

“Whether they are ‘designed to’ or not, common sense dictates that many opposite-sex couples never actually do provide this optimal child-rearing environment, due to drug use, abuse or, more commonly, divorce,” Kern wrote.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., called it “a very interesting turn” to see such decisions coming down in places like Oklahoma, which has an evangelical majority and is home to 640,000 Southern Baptists, and Utah, which is 58 percent Mormon.

“Just before the end of 2013 — a year identified by some gay activists as the gayest year in gay history — those who were looking for the legalization of same-sex marriage coast-to-coast were bemoaning the fact that the so-called low-hanging fruit had already been exploited,” Mohler said in his daily podcast news briefing Jan. 15. “The remaining states are very conservative, or there are other obstacles toward the legalization of same-sex marriage.”

“But as the federal judges in Utah and Oklahoma indicated — even in those very conservative states, states in which constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage passed by overwhelming majorities — the federal courts may intervene to legalize same-sex marriage by judicial fiat,” Mohler said.

]]>Anthony Jordan of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma quickly condemned yesterday’s ruling by a federal judge that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

By Bob Allen

The top official for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma quickly denounced a federal judge’s Jan. 14 ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Terence Kern of the Northern District of Oklahoma said in a 68-page ruling that a 2004 amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman and denying recognition of same-sex marriages performed in another state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against a class of citizens because of their sexual orientation.

Anthony Jordan, executive director of the 1,800-church Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said in a statement released through the Baptist Messenger, the ruling “flies in the face of the biblical and historical meaning of marriage, the wisdom of the ages and the resounding democratic choice of the people of this great state.”

Oklahoma voters approved the marriage amendment in a ballot measure in November 2004 by a 76 percent to 24 percent margin. Similar initiatives were adopted the same year in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah.

Numerous Southern Baptist Convention leaders in comments to Baptist Press called the 2004 election a win for traditional morality and a tribute to the success of the iVoteValues.com initiative led by then-Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission head Richard Land.

But Judge Kern, nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton, said the Oklahoma law results in “intentional discrimination” against same-sex couples because it “was adopted at least in part because of, and not merely in spite of, its discriminatory effect on a particular class of persons.”

The judge said not all intentional discrimination by a state violates equal protection principles, but it must have a “rational” purpose.

“The court recognizes that moral disapproval often stems from deeply held religious convictions,” Kern wrote. “However, moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification for a law.”

Kern recognized “that Oklahoma has a legitimate interest” in upholding the institution of marriage to increase the likelihood that children will be born into a stable home and because those born out of wedlock often create a financial burden on the state. He failed to see, however, how the “exclusion of the disadvantaged group from state-sanctioned marriage” advances that interest.

While procreation is one purpose of marriage, as the state argued, Kern said it is not the only one. There is no requirement for heterosexual couples to have children, he said, and same-sex couples, while not able to “naturally procreate,” can and do have children by other means.

He also questioned the state’s premise that allowing gay couples to wed undermines the “ideal” family unit, defined as “a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

“Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country,” the judge observed.

“Whether they are ‘designed to’ or not, common sense dictates that many opposite-sex couples never actually do provide this optimal child-rearing environment, due to drug use, abuse or, more commonly, divorce,” Kern wrote.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., called it “a very interesting turn” to see such decisions coming down in places like Oklahoma, which has an evangelical majority and is home to 640,000 Southern Baptists, and Utah, which is 58 percent Mormon.

“Just before the end of 2013 — a year identified by some gay activists as the gayest year in gay history — those who were looking for the legalization of same-sex marriage coast-to-coast were bemoaning the fact that the so-called low-hanging fruit had already been exploited,” Mohler said in his daily podcast news briefing Jan. 15. “The remaining states are very conservative, or there are other obstacles toward the legalization of same-sex marriage.”

“But as the federal judges in Utah and Oklahoma indicated — even in those very conservative states, states in which constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage passed by overwhelming majorities — the federal courts may intervene to legalize same-sex marriage by judicial fiat,” Mohler said.

An embattled preacher at the center of what has been called the biggest evangelical sexual-abuse scandal to date heaped praise on a Southern Baptist leader criticized for sticking by him at a weekend conference attended by both men.

C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, Ky., described Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler as a world-class intellectual in a men’s conference on leadership at Cornerstone Church of Knoxville, Tenn., Nov. 14-16.

Mahaney compared Mohler to Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century Christian preacher and theologian best known for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a classic in early American literature.

Quoting from a book that said modern preachers cannot imitate Edwards’ intellect but can emulate his disciplined use of time, Mahaney waxed in his admiration for his friend and fellow leader in the Neo-Calvinism movement popular in evangelical circles including segments of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We just experienced a modern-day illustration,” Mahaney said, referring to Mohler’s address earlier on the program. “I could substitute Dr. Mohler’s name in this quote. I could say to you we’ve not been given Dr. Mohler’s gifts, and it would be useless for me to encourage anyone to imitate Dr. Mohler’s mental ability.”

Mahaney proceeded to expound on a point in Mohler’s message about how important it is for leaders to also be readers, urging the audience never to apologize for having a “stack” of books they are waiting to read.

“If you don’t have a stack of books you’re trying to get to, you need a stack of books you want to get to,” Mohler said.

“I’ve seen his stack of books,” Mahaney said. “If you have a stack of books, I’m saying there’s quite a difference, pretty obvious difference, between your stack and his stack of books. So if you are comforting yourself, ‘I have a stack,’ well you might have a stack, but if we consider the nature and content of your stack as opposed to his stack, well, your stack looks pretty sorry and pathetic.”

“And it isn’t just that your stack is sorry and pathetic in relation to his stack, when he’s done reading his stack he retains all he reads from his stack,” Mahaney continued. “He remembers it, and he can access it and access it well into the future.”

“Whereas for most of us, not only is our stack of books not as impressive as his, but once we are done reading even a single copy or the entire stack, we have a hard time remembering much of anything we read in the stack. And so if we’re just thinking about gifts and mental capacity, and stacks and the ability to retain and remember, it’s hopeless. We haven’t been given these world-class gifts.”

Mahaney stepped down in April as president of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting network he helped launch 30 years ago, amid challenges to his leadership that included being named in a class-action lawsuit alleging a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-up.

Mohler and Mahaney’s friendship includes co-sponsoring with two other colleagues a biennial preaching conference called Together for the Gospel. In May, Mohler and the other two leaders — Baptist pastor Mark Dever and Presbyterian Ligon Duncan — used the T4G website to release a statement vouching for their friend’s integrity.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious, and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” said the statement about a lawsuit accusing Mahaney and other church leaders of failure to report sex crimes to police. “We believe this lawsuit failed that test.”

“For this reason, we, along with many others, refused to step away from C. J. in any way,” the statement continued. “We do not regret that decision. We are profoundly thankful for C. J. as friend, and we are equally thankful for the vast influence for good he has been among so many gospel-minded people.”

The statement was later taken down without explanation, but not before a Georgia pastor sponsored a resolution passed at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting urging denominational leaders “to utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliating with groups and or individuals that possess questionable policies and practices in protecting our children from criminal abuse.”

Similar resolutions passed recently at Baptist state conventions in Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky.

In May, Mahaney announced he would withdraw from the 2014 Together for the Gospel conference out of concern for the event’s co-sponsors.

“Unfortunately, the civil lawsuit filed against Sovereign Grace Ministries, two former SGM churches and pastors (including myself), continues to generate the type of attention that could subject my friends to unfair and unwarranted criticism,” Mahaney said in a statement on the T4G website.

Recently Mahaney’s name appeared along with SBC leaders Danny Akin and Russell Moore introduced as speakers at the 20/20 Collegiate Conference scheduled Feb. 7-8, 2014, at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on the seminary website. Mahaney’s name no longer appears on the web page promoting the conference, but seminary officials didn’t say when or why the change was made.

Peter Lumpkins, the pastor who sponsored the SBC resolution, suggested on his blog that Mohler ought to “re-evaluate the public kinship he has nurtured” with Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries, which moved its headquarters to Louisville from Maryland in part to strengthen ties with Southern Seminary.

Speaking at SGM-affiliated Cornerstone Church, Mohler indicated he was having a grand time.

“Man, I just love seeing what the Lord is doing in this church, right here in Knoxville, and being with this team,” Mohler said in audio posted on the church website. “This is just phenomenal, because what we sense when we’re singing and just when we’re talking to each other here is conviction. The joy of it is we get to articulate the convictions.”

Mohler said for a long time the church “acted as if we were under Soviet persecution” when it came to clearly articulating Christian convictions — “Like we were afraid if we said them there would be some kind of secret code let out.”

“How else can you explain the conviction silence of the church?” he asked. “And what does that produce? It produces a conviction-less church. That’s why it’s so important when we get together we keep saying these things over and over again.”

Most of the lawsuit naming Mahaney has been dismissed due to statute of limitations, but lawyers of alleged victims say they plan to appeal. Criminal charges are pending against Nate Morales, one of a number of alledged pedophiles the suit claims Sovereign Grace Ministries harbored, with a trial scheduled next May.

]]>An evangelical leader under scrutiny for unproven allegations of covering up sexual abuse compared a Southern Baptist seminary president to a modern-day Jonathan Edwards.

By Bob Allen

An embattled preacher at the center of what has been called the biggest evangelical sexual-abuse scandal to date heaped praise on a Southern Baptist leader criticized for sticking by him at a weekend conference attended by both men.

C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, Ky., described Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler as a world-class intellectual in a men’s conference on leadership at Cornerstone Church of Knoxville, Tenn., Nov. 14-16.

Mahaney compared Mohler to Jonathan Edwards, an 18th century Christian preacher and theologian best known for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a classic in early American literature.

Quoting from a book that said modern preachers cannot imitate Edwards’ intellect but can emulate his disciplined use of time, Mahaney waxed in his admiration for his friend and fellow leader in the Neo-Calvinism movement popular in evangelical circles including segments of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We just experienced a modern-day illustration,” Mahaney said, referring to Mohler’s address earlier on the program. “I could substitute Dr. Mohler’s name in this quote. I could say to you we’ve not been given Dr. Mohler’s gifts, and it would be useless for me to encourage anyone to imitate Dr. Mohler’s mental ability.”

Mahaney proceeded to expound on a point in Mohler’s message about how important it is for leaders to also be readers, urging the audience never to apologize for having a “stack” of books they are waiting to read.

“If you don’t have a stack of books you’re trying to get to, you need a stack of books you want to get to,” Mohler said.

“I’ve seen his stack of books,” Mahaney said. “If you have a stack of books, I’m saying there’s quite a difference, pretty obvious difference, between your stack and his stack of books. So if you are comforting yourself, ‘I have a stack,’ well you might have a stack, but if we consider the nature and content of your stack as opposed to his stack, well, your stack looks pretty sorry and pathetic.”

“And it isn’t just that your stack is sorry and pathetic in relation to his stack, when he’s done reading his stack he retains all he reads from his stack,” Mahaney continued. “He remembers it, and he can access it and access it well into the future.”

“Whereas for most of us, not only is our stack of books not as impressive as his, but once we are done reading even a single copy or the entire stack, we have a hard time remembering much of anything we read in the stack. And so if we’re just thinking about gifts and mental capacity, and stacks and the ability to retain and remember, it’s hopeless. We haven’t been given these world-class gifts.”

Mahaney stepped down in April as president of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting network he helped launch 30 years ago, amid challenges to his leadership that included being named in a class-action lawsuit alleging a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-up.

Mohler and Mahaney’s friendship includes co-sponsoring with two other colleagues a biennial preaching conference called Together for the Gospel. In May, Mohler and the other two leaders — Baptist pastor Mark Dever and Presbyterian Ligon Duncan — used the T4G website to release a statement vouching for their friend’s integrity.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious, and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” said the statement about a lawsuit accusing Mahaney and other church leaders of failure to report sex crimes to police. “We believe this lawsuit failed that test.”

“For this reason, we, along with many others, refused to step away from C. J. in any way,” the statement continued. “We do not regret that decision. We are profoundly thankful for C. J. as friend, and we are equally thankful for the vast influence for good he has been among so many gospel-minded people.”

The statement was later taken down without explanation, but not before a Georgia pastor sponsored a resolution passed at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting urging denominational leaders “to utilize the highest sense of discernment in affiliating with groups and or individuals that possess questionable policies and practices in protecting our children from criminal abuse.”

Similar resolutions passed recently at Baptist state conventions in Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky.

In May, Mahaney announced he would withdraw from the 2014 Together for the Gospel conference out of concern for the event’s co-sponsors.

“Unfortunately, the civil lawsuit filed against Sovereign Grace Ministries, two former SGM churches and pastors (including myself), continues to generate the type of attention that could subject my friends to unfair and unwarranted criticism,” Mahaney said in a statement on the T4G website.

Recently Mahaney’s name appeared along with SBC leaders Danny Akin and Russell Moore introduced as speakers at the 20/20 Collegiate Conference scheduled Feb. 7-8, 2014, at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on the seminary website. Mahaney’s name no longer appears on the web page promoting the conference, but seminary officials didn’t say when or why the change was made.

Peter Lumpkins, the pastor who sponsored the SBC resolution, suggested on his blog that Mohler ought to “re-evaluate the public kinship he has nurtured” with Mahaney and Sovereign Grace Ministries, which moved its headquarters to Louisville from Maryland in part to strengthen ties with Southern Seminary.

Speaking at SGM-affiliated Cornerstone Church, Mohler indicated he was having a grand time.

“Man, I just love seeing what the Lord is doing in this church, right here in Knoxville, and being with this team,” Mohler said in audio posted on the church website. “This is just phenomenal, because what we sense when we’re singing and just when we’re talking to each other here is conviction. The joy of it is we get to articulate the convictions.”

Mohler said for a long time the church “acted as if we were under Soviet persecution” when it came to clearly articulating Christian convictions — “Like we were afraid if we said them there would be some kind of secret code let out.”

“How else can you explain the conviction silence of the church?” he asked. “And what does that produce? It produces a conviction-less church. That’s why it’s so important when we get together we keep saying these things over and over again.”

Most of the lawsuit naming Mahaney has been dismissed due to statute of limitations, but lawyers of alleged victims say they plan to appeal. Criminal charges are pending against Nate Morales, one of a number of alledged pedophiles the suit claims Sovereign Grace Ministries harbored, with a trial scheduled next May.

]]>Bob AllenPeopleTue, 19 Nov 2013 11:51:11 -0500Mohler reflects on 20 years at Southernhttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/8934-mohler-reflects-on-20-years-at-southern-seminary
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/8934-mohler-reflects-on-20-years-at-southern-seminaryOne of the most controversial presidents in the 154-year history of Southern Seminary reveals in a wide-ranging interview that he almost chose to study at Southwestern Seminary instead.

By Bob Allen

With two decades under his belt as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary, Albert Mohler’s 10-year plan includes writing a systematic theology, according to a 2,800-word story published Oct. 15 in the campus newspaper The Towers.

Elected president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in March 1993 to correct what trustees regarded as a liberal drift away from beliefs taught by the institution’s founders, Mohler said he has no regrets about changes made during a tumultuous era in Southern Baptist life known as the “conservative resurgence,” but if he had it to do over “I would probably go into it understanding just how costly at the relational level it would be.”

Many on the faculty, most of whom were former teachers and advisers to Mohler when he was a student, sharply disagreed with his agenda. At one point, he said, people who opposed him were mean to his small children, and he and his wife “were almost unable to go eat in a restaurant without having invectives hurled at us.”

Mohler said one criticism that hurt especially was that he was motivated by personal ambition.

“The most injurious thing is when people impute motivations that you can’t possibly refute because you can’t put your heart out on the table and let people read it,” he said. “You just have to trust you’ll be vindicated over time.”

Mohler said the committee that hired him asked him to stay for 35 years, modeling his presidency after long and influential tenures of predecessors James P. Boyce, E.Y. Mullins and Duke McCall.

Mohler said his third decade at the seminary in Louisville, Ky., will focus on producing the kind of pastors, teachers, ministers and missionaries equipped for ministry in the 21st century and building a student body that is more ethnically diverse. Future plans also include the writing of a systematic theology textbook.

“My goal is that in the next 10 years, by the time I reach the end of this 10-year period, I’ll be well on my way to getting that systematic theology into final, printed form,” he said. “It will be a systematic theology written intentionally to express what it means to confess the faith once for all delivered to the saints within the very intellectually hostile conditions of late modernity. So it’s going to be a systematic theology and an apologetic engagement.”

Mohler said he doesn’t feel an urgency to publish his textbook soon, because there are a number of quality systematic theology books available, but he believes part of his responsibility is to leave behind a systematic theology as presidents Boyce and Mullins famously did before him.

Growing up in Florida with a pastor who was a Ph.D. graduate of Southern, Mohler said he naturally gravitated toward being a student at Southern Seminary, but nearly changed his mind when his application for admission was mishandled and then-President Russell Dilday offered him a full presidential scholarship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

After meeting theologian Dale Moody and sitting in Wayne Ward’s systematic theology class during a campus visit and noticing similarities with Samford University, where he completed his undergraduate studies, however, the 21-year-old Mohler loaded his 1974 Mustang II in August 1980 and moved to Louisville to begin studies for his master of divinity degree.

]]>One of the most controversial presidents in the 154-year history of Southern Seminary reveals in a wide-ranging interview that he almost chose to study at Southwestern Seminary instead.

By Bob Allen

With two decades under his belt as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary, Albert Mohler’s 10-year plan includes writing a systematic theology, according to a 2,800-word story published Oct. 15 in the campus newspaper The Towers.

Elected president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in March 1993 to correct what trustees regarded as a liberal drift away from beliefs taught by the institution’s founders, Mohler said he has no regrets about changes made during a tumultuous era in Southern Baptist life known as the “conservative resurgence,” but if he had it to do over “I would probably go into it understanding just how costly at the relational level it would be.”

Many on the faculty, most of whom were former teachers and advisers to Mohler when he was a student, sharply disagreed with his agenda. At one point, he said, people who opposed him were mean to his small children, and he and his wife “were almost unable to go eat in a restaurant without having invectives hurled at us.”

Mohler said one criticism that hurt especially was that he was motivated by personal ambition.

“The most injurious thing is when people impute motivations that you can’t possibly refute because you can’t put your heart out on the table and let people read it,” he said. “You just have to trust you’ll be vindicated over time.”

Mohler said the committee that hired him asked him to stay for 35 years, modeling his presidency after long and influential tenures of predecessors James P. Boyce, E.Y. Mullins and Duke McCall.

Mohler said his third decade at the seminary in Louisville, Ky., will focus on producing the kind of pastors, teachers, ministers and missionaries equipped for ministry in the 21st century and building a student body that is more ethnically diverse. Future plans also include the writing of a systematic theology textbook.

“My goal is that in the next 10 years, by the time I reach the end of this 10-year period, I’ll be well on my way to getting that systematic theology into final, printed form,” he said. “It will be a systematic theology written intentionally to express what it means to confess the faith once for all delivered to the saints within the very intellectually hostile conditions of late modernity. So it’s going to be a systematic theology and an apologetic engagement.”

Mohler said he doesn’t feel an urgency to publish his textbook soon, because there are a number of quality systematic theology books available, but he believes part of his responsibility is to leave behind a systematic theology as presidents Boyce and Mullins famously did before him.

Growing up in Florida with a pastor who was a Ph.D. graduate of Southern, Mohler said he naturally gravitated toward being a student at Southern Seminary, but nearly changed his mind when his application for admission was mishandled and then-President Russell Dilday offered him a full presidential scholarship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

After meeting theologian Dale Moody and sitting in Wayne Ward’s systematic theology class during a campus visit and noticing similarities with Samford University, where he completed his undergraduate studies, however, the 21-year-old Mohler loaded his 1974 Mustang II in August 1980 and moved to Louisville to begin studies for his master of divinity degree.

We would be the first to defend the right of Southern Baptist and all evangelical military chaplains to serve our country's patriotic and heroic warriors. In fact, the military chaplaincy as it has always existed should reflect a fair and representative cross section of religion in America. Our soldiers, sailors, airman, Marines and coast guardsmen deserve nothing less!

Most chaplains agree that they have a sacred obligation to either “perform or provide” for the religious needs of all troops. Military chaplaincy has a long history of “cooperation without compromise.”

The proud history of the military chaplaincy is rich with the stories of chaplains who have successfully navigated those challenging requirements, and it should be no different today. We have absolute confidence that our chaplains, with few exceptions, understand their obligation to remain faithful to their beliefs while serving their country.

Both signers of this response represented conservative evangelical denominations during long and rewarding military careers. Paul served 31 years of military service as a chaplain endorsed by Southern Baptists. Herman served 34, endorsed by the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

Neither of us was ever asked or required to violate our religious beliefs or the expectations of our respective denominations. Our commanders and supervisory chaplains at every level recognized and respected our particular, unique denominational values.

The demise of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act has not changed these time-honored principles of military chaplaincy. Statements suggesting otherwise are divisive and sadly misguided. They are creating unnecessary tensions in the military chaplaincy that are distracting chaplains from their primary duty to be of service to all, and to secure the free exercise of religion for America's service members.

Most would agree that the "moral crisis" Dr. Mohler claims the military chaplaincy is facing is part of an evolving culture in the nation and the world. Our courageous and loyal service members, whether gay or straight, serve their country in the midst of a shifting culture, one in constant change, and one which is far more pluralistic and diverse than when we served.

Military chaplains face new challenges, unprecedented battle tempos and immense personal and family stress. Perhaps more than ever, our military chaplains work in a multi-cultural environment demanding respect of both differences and commonalities as citizens of this great experiment in democracy.

These new challenges should not be fought at the cost of cooperative and collegial ministry to the Armed Forces. Yet, some denominational executives and endorsers are crafting policies that hamstring their chaplains with unrealistic and unreasonable demands — demands that are making religious ministry in the military virtually impossible. They may be forcing chaplains into a false dualism and the untenable position of either caring for their troops or serving their denominations.

Some chaplains today are faced with new endorser requirements restricting the freedom to work with chaplains, chaplain assistants and chapel volunteers from other faith groups and inhibiting ministry to all service members without bias and discrimination.

Specifically, Southern Baptist chaplains are now forbidden by mandatory guidelines, published by the North American Mission Board, from pastoral ministries with those who are welcoming and affirming of LGBT service members, their spouses and families. Or, in the words of Albert Mohler, "those churches and denominations who are wearing out their knees bowing to Baal."

As hurtful as the attitudes and rhetoric of some denominational executives are, homosexuality is simply not the issue threatening the Chaplain Corps. Faith communities that believe committed homosexual relationships are sinful have every right to their sincerely held religious beliefs.

However, while these faith communities are expected to endorse fully qualified chaplains for military service who share their beliefs, these communities have also accepted the mandate that all chaplains must be able to work within the pluralistic and multicultural environment of the military.

Attitudes of religious hostility, which erect walls rather than build bridges, are incompatible with those pledges. Military commanders and leaders with boots on the ground fear this unnecessary and manmade battle in the chaplaincy will become a mission distracter and a deterrent to good order, discipline and morale.

The historic and time-honored motto of military chaplains says it best: "Nurture the Living. Care for the Wounded. Honor the Fallen." Honoring this, with uncompromising ethics and genuine integrity, chaplains of every faith and belief will be able to serve honorably and proudly in America's military.

]]>Two retired Army chaplains respond to a seminary president’s recent article defending new guidelines that bar Southern Baptist military chaplains from conducting or attending same-sex weddings.

By Paul Dodd and Herman Keizer Jr.

We would be the first to defend the right of Southern Baptist and all evangelical military chaplains to serve our country's patriotic and heroic warriors. In fact, the military chaplaincy as it has always existed should reflect a fair and representative cross section of religion in America. Our soldiers, sailors, airman, Marines and coast guardsmen deserve nothing less!

Most chaplains agree that they have a sacred obligation to either “perform or provide” for the religious needs of all troops. Military chaplaincy has a long history of “cooperation without compromise.”

The proud history of the military chaplaincy is rich with the stories of chaplains who have successfully navigated those challenging requirements, and it should be no different today. We have absolute confidence that our chaplains, with few exceptions, understand their obligation to remain faithful to their beliefs while serving their country.

Both signers of this response represented conservative evangelical denominations during long and rewarding military careers. Paul served 31 years of military service as a chaplain endorsed by Southern Baptists. Herman served 34, endorsed by the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

Neither of us was ever asked or required to violate our religious beliefs or the expectations of our respective denominations. Our commanders and supervisory chaplains at every level recognized and respected our particular, unique denominational values.

The demise of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act has not changed these time-honored principles of military chaplaincy. Statements suggesting otherwise are divisive and sadly misguided. They are creating unnecessary tensions in the military chaplaincy that are distracting chaplains from their primary duty to be of service to all, and to secure the free exercise of religion for America's service members.

Most would agree that the "moral crisis" Dr. Mohler claims the military chaplaincy is facing is part of an evolving culture in the nation and the world. Our courageous and loyal service members, whether gay or straight, serve their country in the midst of a shifting culture, one in constant change, and one which is far more pluralistic and diverse than when we served.

Military chaplains face new challenges, unprecedented battle tempos and immense personal and family stress. Perhaps more than ever, our military chaplains work in a multi-cultural environment demanding respect of both differences and commonalities as citizens of this great experiment in democracy.

These new challenges should not be fought at the cost of cooperative and collegial ministry to the Armed Forces. Yet, some denominational executives and endorsers are crafting policies that hamstring their chaplains with unrealistic and unreasonable demands — demands that are making religious ministry in the military virtually impossible. They may be forcing chaplains into a false dualism and the untenable position of either caring for their troops or serving their denominations.

Some chaplains today are faced with new endorser requirements restricting the freedom to work with chaplains, chaplain assistants and chapel volunteers from other faith groups and inhibiting ministry to all service members without bias and discrimination.

Specifically, Southern Baptist chaplains are now forbidden by mandatory guidelines, published by the North American Mission Board, from pastoral ministries with those who are welcoming and affirming of LGBT service members, their spouses and families. Or, in the words of Albert Mohler, "those churches and denominations who are wearing out their knees bowing to Baal."

As hurtful as the attitudes and rhetoric of some denominational executives are, homosexuality is simply not the issue threatening the Chaplain Corps. Faith communities that believe committed homosexual relationships are sinful have every right to their sincerely held religious beliefs.

However, while these faith communities are expected to endorse fully qualified chaplains for military service who share their beliefs, these communities have also accepted the mandate that all chaplains must be able to work within the pluralistic and multicultural environment of the military.

Attitudes of religious hostility, which erect walls rather than build bridges, are incompatible with those pledges. Military commanders and leaders with boots on the ground fear this unnecessary and manmade battle in the chaplaincy will become a mission distracter and a deterrent to good order, discipline and morale.

The historic and time-honored motto of military chaplains says it best: "Nurture the Living. Care for the Wounded. Honor the Fallen." Honoring this, with uncompromising ethics and genuine integrity, chaplains of every faith and belief will be able to serve honorably and proudly in America's military.

This week, the Christian right observes a leadership change in one of its most important institutions.

Last year, Richard Land announced his retirement as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land’s successor is Russell Moore, formerly dean of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Moore's inauguration is a generational changing of the guard — a fresh face with a winsome tone replacing an aging partisan known for inartful statements.

What conservative group wouldn't want Mike Huckabee at the helm after Rush Limbaugh went off the rails one-too-many times? Already, Moore has earned high praise for his intelligence and sincerity.

At first glance, it may seem irrelevant that the ERLC presidency is turning over at a moment when, for the first time in decades, white evangelicals are involved in a public debate about birth control.

Ever since January 2012, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidelines requiring certain religious employers to provide contraception coverage on their group health insurance plans, evangelicals have stood with Catholics and other religious-liberty advocates against the HHS mandate.

On the surface, the protest has been over religious liberty, not contraception. After all, along with every religious group, the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals approve of contraception, at least for married couples.

But there is a quiet revolution brewing among a growing segment of fundamentalist Protestants. Certain sects, usually hyper-Calvinist and often identified with "Christian patriarchy," Dominionism or the "Quiverfull" movement, are wooing mainstream evangelicals and exhorting them to let God determine the size of their families.

Once seen as a pesky denominational nuisance, Calvinism is on the rise in today's SBC. A commission of prominent Baptist leaders recently released a statement that legitimates Calvinist theology in Baptist churches and institutions.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, easily the most respected and influential voice in the SBC, has offered a contradictory statement on birth control: “Christians may make careful and discriminating use of proper technologies, but must never buy into the contraceptive mentality. We can never see children as problems to be avoided, but always as gifts to be welcomed and received.”

Except when married couples want to avoid conceiving a child, apparently. Mohler’s relatively frequent diatribes against the “contraceptive culture” give cover to other Baptist elites who want to do away with contraception altogether.

Moore, the new ERLC president, has gone even further. Knowing, as smart religious leaders do, the vital role of birth rates and retention (not just conversions) in denominational market share, Moore exhorted Southern Baptists in 2006 to "outbreed the Mormons and out-preach the Pentecostals."

In 2011, Moore endorsed a controversial anti-contraception book by Allan Carlson, an intellectual leader in the Christian patriarchy movement. "This provocative volume by one of the world's foremost family-issues scholars suggests that perhaps American Evangelicalism unwittingly traded the Blessed Virgin Mary for Margaret Sanger,” Moore wrote in his review. “The arguments are hard-hitting and unrelenting. Reading this book is like seeing an unwelcome reflection in a mirror. But it might just start a conversation that is well worth having."

It's not exactly clear what part of evangelicals' engagement with the birth-control issue is so unwelcome to Moore or what kind of conversation he wants evangelicals to have. But his sympathies for the anti-contraception movement should at least provoke the religious media to ask him to clarify his views, which so far they have not.

It is undeniable that the decoupling of sex from procreation was a dramatic technological change with profound social, moral and theological implications. Southern Baptists should want their top ethics expert and chief lobbyist to have grappled with the issue. But the 15 million Southern Baptists for whom Moore now speaks have the right to know if he thinks they are sinners for using contraception to control the number and spacing of their children.

Conservative Protestants have adopted Catholic positions on other sex-related issues. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until evangelical elites began pushing back against birth control. If they think they can convince the rank and file, they should take a good, hard look at the Catholic hierarchy’s absolute failure on that score.

Baptist clergy and laypeople will be pleased that Moore is mostly a stylistic improvement over Land. Their policy positions do not differ significantly. But the anti-contraception movement has gained some steam, especially in the wake of the HHS mandate.

Is the new ERLC going to be part of it? Baptist churches whose offering plate dollars fund the ERLC have a right to know if they will soon be financing a war against birth control.

]]>Is the new head of Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission anti-birth control?

By Jacob Lupfer

This week, the Christian right observes a leadership change in one of its most important institutions.

Last year, Richard Land announced his retirement as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land’s successor is Russell Moore, formerly dean of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Moore's inauguration is a generational changing of the guard — a fresh face with a winsome tone replacing an aging partisan known for inartful statements.

What conservative group wouldn't want Mike Huckabee at the helm after Rush Limbaugh went off the rails one-too-many times? Already, Moore has earned high praise for his intelligence and sincerity.

At first glance, it may seem irrelevant that the ERLC presidency is turning over at a moment when, for the first time in decades, white evangelicals are involved in a public debate about birth control.

Ever since January 2012, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidelines requiring certain religious employers to provide contraception coverage on their group health insurance plans, evangelicals have stood with Catholics and other religious-liberty advocates against the HHS mandate.

On the surface, the protest has been over religious liberty, not contraception. After all, along with every religious group, the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals approve of contraception, at least for married couples.

But there is a quiet revolution brewing among a growing segment of fundamentalist Protestants. Certain sects, usually hyper-Calvinist and often identified with "Christian patriarchy," Dominionism or the "Quiverfull" movement, are wooing mainstream evangelicals and exhorting them to let God determine the size of their families.

Once seen as a pesky denominational nuisance, Calvinism is on the rise in today's SBC. A commission of prominent Baptist leaders recently released a statement that legitimates Calvinist theology in Baptist churches and institutions.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, easily the most respected and influential voice in the SBC, has offered a contradictory statement on birth control: “Christians may make careful and discriminating use of proper technologies, but must never buy into the contraceptive mentality. We can never see children as problems to be avoided, but always as gifts to be welcomed and received.”

Except when married couples want to avoid conceiving a child, apparently. Mohler’s relatively frequent diatribes against the “contraceptive culture” give cover to other Baptist elites who want to do away with contraception altogether.

Moore, the new ERLC president, has gone even further. Knowing, as smart religious leaders do, the vital role of birth rates and retention (not just conversions) in denominational market share, Moore exhorted Southern Baptists in 2006 to "outbreed the Mormons and out-preach the Pentecostals."

In 2011, Moore endorsed a controversial anti-contraception book by Allan Carlson, an intellectual leader in the Christian patriarchy movement. "This provocative volume by one of the world's foremost family-issues scholars suggests that perhaps American Evangelicalism unwittingly traded the Blessed Virgin Mary for Margaret Sanger,” Moore wrote in his review. “The arguments are hard-hitting and unrelenting. Reading this book is like seeing an unwelcome reflection in a mirror. But it might just start a conversation that is well worth having."

It's not exactly clear what part of evangelicals' engagement with the birth-control issue is so unwelcome to Moore or what kind of conversation he wants evangelicals to have. But his sympathies for the anti-contraception movement should at least provoke the religious media to ask him to clarify his views, which so far they have not.

It is undeniable that the decoupling of sex from procreation was a dramatic technological change with profound social, moral and theological implications. Southern Baptists should want their top ethics expert and chief lobbyist to have grappled with the issue. But the 15 million Southern Baptists for whom Moore now speaks have the right to know if he thinks they are sinners for using contraception to control the number and spacing of their children.

Conservative Protestants have adopted Catholic positions on other sex-related issues. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until evangelical elites began pushing back against birth control. If they think they can convince the rank and file, they should take a good, hard look at the Catholic hierarchy’s absolute failure on that score.

Baptist clergy and laypeople will be pleased that Moore is mostly a stylistic improvement over Land. Their policy positions do not differ significantly. But the anti-contraception movement has gained some steam, especially in the wake of the HHS mandate.

Is the new ERLC going to be part of it? Baptist churches whose offering plate dollars fund the ERLC have a right to know if they will soon be financing a war against birth control.

Southern Baptist leaders in a movement that goes by names including the “New Calvinism” and “young, restless and Reformed” voiced support for a friend and colleague accused in a Maryland lawsuit of collusion in what is being called American evangelicalism's biggest sex scandal to date.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., joined Presbyterian minister Ligon Duncan in a statement of support for C.J. Mahaney, one of several defendants accused of permitting and covering up the sexual abuse of children in churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinist church-planting organization based in Louisville, Ky.

“We have stood beside our friend, C. J. Mahaney, and we can speak to his personal integrity,” the trio, who with Mahaney started a biennial preaching conference called Together for the Gospel in 2006, said in a statement on the T4G website.

Dever, Duncan and Mohler said they have wanted to speak publicly on Mahaney but waited until after Maryland Judge Sharon V. Burrell dismissed most of the lawsuit on a technicality. She ruled that nine of 11 plaintiffs did not sue within three years after turning 18 as required under Maryland’s statute of limitations.

Washington lawyer Susan Burke, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the alleged victims, said they knew about the statute from the outset and tried to overcome it with a conspiracy theory that the judge rejected. She disagreed with the ruling and planned to appeal, and the two remaining plaintiffs must file a third amended complaint to clarify allegations against the remaining defendants.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious, and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” Dever, Duncan and Mohler said in their statement.

“No such accusation of direct wrongdoing was ever made against C. J. Mahaney,” they said. “Instead, he was charged with founding a ministry and for teaching doctrines and principles that are held to be true by vast millions of American evangelicals.”

“For this reason, we, along with many others, refused to step away from C. J. in any way,” they continued. “We do not regret that decision. We are profoundly thankful for C. J. as friend, and we are equally thankful for the vast influence for good he has been among so many Gospel-minded people.”

Bloggers following the scandal reacted to the statement with disapproval. The Wartburg Watch, started by North Carolina bloggers Dee Parsons and Wanda Martin to track troubling trends in evangelical Christianity, accused Mahaney’s supporters of “utter disregard” for victims and called their defense “absolutely unconscionable.”

Amy Smith, Houston representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called it an example of “selective outrage,” where Southern Baptist leaders speak out on issues like opposition to same-sex marriage and allowing gay youth to be Boy Scouts but are silent when it involves one of their own.

Joel Taylor, a Virginia minister who blogs at 5 Pt. Salt, compared statements of support for Mahaney to Tammy Wynette’s country music classic “Stand By Your Man.”

Bob Hadley, pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., who blogs at SBC Issues, contrasted the reaction to Mahaney’s problems to recent concerns that Louisiana College and Campbellsville University were not renewing contracts of Calvinist professors.

He predicted more of the same model as Calvinism gains more control in the SBC: “Do not renew a Calvinist’s contract and be ready for an onslaught of criticism. If you are part of the club, we will stand by you, no matter what.”

The lawsuit alleges that Mahaney and other SGM leaders knew about sexual abuse of children occurring in homes and on church property but did not report it to legal authorities. Instead church leaders insisted on handling the problem internally in the name of “church discipline,” a practice of confronting and correcting sin adapted from Bible verses including Matthew 18:15-17.

At Sovereign Grace Ministries, the lawsuit alleges, that meant that victims as young as 2 were summoned to meetings with their molester and told to forgive them for their sins. Victims and parents were told not to call the police, because civil authorities cannot be trusted in disputes between Christians. When church members ignored that advice, they were put out of the church for “gossip,” while sex offenders remained with access to children in pursuit of restoration.

The suit says church leaders interfered with legal processes by misinforming victims’ families about when to show up for court dates and telling authorities they were speaking on behalf of victims without being authorized to do so.

As pastor of one of the churches named in the lawsuit and until recently president of Sovereign Grace Ministries, Mahaney is accused of knowing what was going on and advising subordinates on how to handle incidents of abuse.

"What everyone has told us is that C. J. Mahaney for many, many years was the authority within the church, and that there wasn't a church rule or doctrine or habit or custom that he did not approve of and participate in,” plaintiff attorney Bill O'Neil said recently on the Janet Mefferds Radio Show.

“So as the head of the church, it seems that it's impossible for someone to have that level of involvement and not know what was going on,” O’Neil said. “Now some of that is going to be subject to our ability to question him in discovery and to gain access to their files, which we have not had the opportunity to do yet."

Brent Detwiler, a former associate to Mahaney and now a leading critic, said criminal investigations are now underway ranging from obstruction of justice to rape.

Mohler, Dever and Duncan declined to comment on the specific allegations in the lawsuit, but said a minister’s first response should be to inform law enforcement and act to protect the child or young person and “then to proceed to biblical church discipline when the facts demand such a response.”

“If a Christian leader is accused of any wrongdoing, those to whom he is accountable must investigate the charges and then deal responsibly with the evidence,” they said. “If a criminal accusation is made, Christians have a fundamental duty to inform law enforcement officials. This does not, however, preclude or mitigate the church’s responsibility for biblical church discipline.”

Boz Tchividjian, a professor of law at Liberty University School of Law and grandson of Billy Graham, said evangelical leaders’ silence about Mahaney “was deafening and spoke volumes.”

While hoping to hear voices speaking out or expressing grave concerns about the allegations in the SGM lawsuit, Tchividjian said he found instead a lot of statements by Christians claiming that all of the individuals were innocent until “proven guilty by a jury.”

“For example, so many Christians will cry out against abortion doctors who have been alleged to have killed babies outside of the womb (horrific), but when a person alleges child sexual abuse by someone in the Church, these same Christians cry out that a person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law,” he wrote.

“Of course a person or institution can only be held legally responsible under civil law when that has been determined by a court of law,” Tchividjian said. “I don’t think anyone has suggested otherwise. However, does this mean that a jury is required in order to determine the existence of evil?”

Peter Lumpkins, a blogger and minister in Carrollton, Ga., recently announced plans to introduce a resolution at the upcoming SBC annual meeting urging denominational leaders to disassociate from public figures accused in criminal or civil litigation involving sexual abuse.

In their statement, however, Dever, Duncan and Mohler said: “If the filing of civil litigation against a Christian ministry or leader is in itself reason for separation and a rush to judgment, no ministry or minister is safe from destruction at any time. Furthermore, the effort to try such a case in the court of public opinion prior to any decision rendered by an authorized court is likewise irresponsible.”

Southern Baptist leaders in a movement that goes by names including the “New Calvinism” and “young, restless and Reformed” voiced support for a friend and colleague accused in a Maryland lawsuit of collusion in what is being called American evangelicalism's biggest sex scandal to date.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., joined Presbyterian minister Ligon Duncan in a statement of support for C.J. Mahaney, one of several defendants accused of permitting and covering up the sexual abuse of children in churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinist church-planting organization based in Louisville, Ky.

“We have stood beside our friend, C. J. Mahaney, and we can speak to his personal integrity,” the trio, who with Mahaney started a biennial preaching conference called Together for the Gospel in 2006, said in a statement on the T4G website.

Dever, Duncan and Mohler said they have wanted to speak publicly on Mahaney but waited until after Maryland Judge Sharon V. Burrell dismissed most of the lawsuit on a technicality. She ruled that nine of 11 plaintiffs did not sue within three years after turning 18 as required under Maryland’s statute of limitations.

Washington lawyer Susan Burke, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the alleged victims, said they knew about the statute from the outset and tried to overcome it with a conspiracy theory that the judge rejected. She disagreed with the ruling and planned to appeal, and the two remaining plaintiffs must file a third amended complaint to clarify allegations against the remaining defendants.

“A Christian leader, charged with any credible, serious, and direct wrongdoing, would usually be well advised to step down from public ministry,” Dever, Duncan and Mohler said in their statement.

“No such accusation of direct wrongdoing was ever made against C. J. Mahaney,” they said. “Instead, he was charged with founding a ministry and for teaching doctrines and principles that are held to be true by vast millions of American evangelicals.”

“For this reason, we, along with many others, refused to step away from C. J. in any way,” they continued. “We do not regret that decision. We are profoundly thankful for C. J. as friend, and we are equally thankful for the vast influence for good he has been among so many Gospel-minded people.”

Bloggers following the scandal reacted to the statement with disapproval. The Wartburg Watch, started by North Carolina bloggers Dee Parsons and Wanda Martin to track troubling trends in evangelical Christianity, accused Mahaney’s supporters of “utter disregard” for victims and called their defense “absolutely unconscionable.”

Amy Smith, Houston representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called it an example of “selective outrage,” where Southern Baptist leaders speak out on issues like opposition to same-sex marriage and allowing gay youth to be Boy Scouts but are silent when it involves one of their own.

Joel Taylor, a Virginia minister who blogs at 5 Pt. Salt, compared statements of support for Mahaney to Tammy Wynette’s country music classic “Stand By Your Man.”

Bob Hadley, pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., who blogs at SBC Issues, contrasted the reaction to Mahaney’s problems to recent concerns that Louisiana College and Campbellsville University were not renewing contracts of Calvinist professors.

He predicted more of the same model as Calvinism gains more control in the SBC: “Do not renew a Calvinist’s contract and be ready for an onslaught of criticism. If you are part of the club, we will stand by you, no matter what.”

The lawsuit alleges that Mahaney and other SGM leaders knew about sexual abuse of children occurring in homes and on church property but did not report it to legal authorities. Instead church leaders insisted on handling the problem internally in the name of “church discipline,” a practice of confronting and correcting sin adapted from Bible verses including Matthew 18:15-17.

At Sovereign Grace Ministries, the lawsuit alleges, that meant that victims as young as 2 were summoned to meetings with their molester and told to forgive them for their sins. Victims and parents were told not to call the police, because civil authorities cannot be trusted in disputes between Christians. When church members ignored that advice, they were put out of the church for “gossip,” while sex offenders remained with access to children in pursuit of restoration.

The suit says church leaders interfered with legal processes by misinforming victims’ families about when to show up for court dates and telling authorities they were speaking on behalf of victims without being authorized to do so.

As pastor of one of the churches named in the lawsuit and until recently president of Sovereign Grace Ministries, Mahaney is accused of knowing what was going on and advising subordinates on how to handle incidents of abuse.

"What everyone has told us is that C. J. Mahaney for many, many years was the authority within the church, and that there wasn't a church rule or doctrine or habit or custom that he did not approve of and participate in,” plaintiff attorney Bill O'Neil said recently on the Janet Mefferds Radio Show.

“So as the head of the church, it seems that it's impossible for someone to have that level of involvement and not know what was going on,” O’Neil said. “Now some of that is going to be subject to our ability to question him in discovery and to gain access to their files, which we have not had the opportunity to do yet."

Brent Detwiler, a former associate to Mahaney and now a leading critic, said criminal investigations are now underway ranging from obstruction of justice to rape.

Mohler, Dever and Duncan declined to comment on the specific allegations in the lawsuit, but said a minister’s first response should be to inform law enforcement and act to protect the child or young person and “then to proceed to biblical church discipline when the facts demand such a response.”

“If a Christian leader is accused of any wrongdoing, those to whom he is accountable must investigate the charges and then deal responsibly with the evidence,” they said. “If a criminal accusation is made, Christians have a fundamental duty to inform law enforcement officials. This does not, however, preclude or mitigate the church’s responsibility for biblical church discipline.”

Boz Tchividjian, a professor of law at Liberty University School of Law and grandson of Billy Graham, said evangelical leaders’ silence about Mahaney “was deafening and spoke volumes.”

While hoping to hear voices speaking out or expressing grave concerns about the allegations in the SGM lawsuit, Tchividjian said he found instead a lot of statements by Christians claiming that all of the individuals were innocent until “proven guilty by a jury.”

“For example, so many Christians will cry out against abortion doctors who have been alleged to have killed babies outside of the womb (horrific), but when a person alleges child sexual abuse by someone in the Church, these same Christians cry out that a person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law,” he wrote.

“Of course a person or institution can only be held legally responsible under civil law when that has been determined by a court of law,” Tchividjian said. “I don’t think anyone has suggested otherwise. However, does this mean that a jury is required in order to determine the existence of evil?”

Peter Lumpkins, a blogger and minister in Carrollton, Ga., recently announced plans to introduce a resolution at the upcoming SBC annual meeting urging denominational leaders to disassociate from public figures accused in criminal or civil litigation involving sexual abuse.

In their statement, however, Dever, Duncan and Mohler said: “If the filing of civil litigation against a Christian ministry or leader is in itself reason for separation and a rush to judgment, no ministry or minister is safe from destruction at any time. Furthermore, the effort to try such a case in the court of public opinion prior to any decision rendered by an authorized court is likewise irresponsible.”

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesTue, 28 May 2013 15:56:23 -0400Sex crimes, cover-up, alleged in lawsuithttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/8503-sex-crimes-cover-up-alleged-in-lawsuit
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/8503-sex-crimes-cover-up-alleged-in-lawsuitA lawsuit alleging that leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries conspired to conceal the sexual abuse of children has been amended a second time.

By Bob Allen

A Calvinist church-planting network with ties to Southern Baptist leaders faces new allegations of covering up sexual abuse of children in a 46-page amended lawsuit filed May 14 in Maryland.

The new court document includes graphic descriptions of molestation of boys and girls at churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries and accuses pastors of conspiring to cover up the alleged abuse.

One of the alleged perpetrators, former SGM board chairman John Loftness, denied ever abusing a child or shielding a known pedophile from arrest. The ministry website said an internal review of the allegations “has not produced any evidence of any cover-up or conspiracy.”

Sovereign Grace Ministries is best known in Baptist life for ties between founder C.J. Mahaney and leaders in a movement sometimes called “young, restless and Reformed,” a resurgent interest in Calvinism gaining ground at Southern Baptist Convention seminaries.

Mahaney, who recently resigned as SGM president, planted a church in Louisville, Ky., last year when the ministry headquarters moved there from Gaithersburg, Md., in part to strengthen ties to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Seminary President Albert Mohler has worked with Mahaney on projects including Together for the Gospel, a conference for young pastors, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which has offices on the Southern Seminary campus. Podcasts by Mohler are offered in the Sovereign Grace Ministries Store.

The Sovereign Grace website includes Mahaney’s 2009 interview with Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In January, Akin brought Mahaney to the seminary campus in Wake Forest, N.C., to speak at this year’s 20/20 Collegiate Conference, an annual event for college students from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

Mahaney spoke recently at a conference in South Africa called Rezolution that he headlined with Calvinist leaders Kevin DeYoung, Ligon Duncan, Bob Kauflin and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington and president of 9Marks Ministries.

In February, a former SGM leader turned whistleblower accused Baptist and other evangelical leaders of enabling sin by continuing to promote Mahaney while questions about his fitness for ministry remain unanswered.

The second amended lawsuit adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It requests a jury trial.

]]>A lawsuit alleging that leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries conspired to conceal the sexual abuse of children has been amended a second time.

By Bob Allen

A Calvinist church-planting network with ties to Southern Baptist leaders faces new allegations of covering up sexual abuse of children in a 46-page amended lawsuit filed May 14 in Maryland.

The new court document includes graphic descriptions of molestation of boys and girls at churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries and accuses pastors of conspiring to cover up the alleged abuse.

One of the alleged perpetrators, former SGM board chairman John Loftness, denied ever abusing a child or shielding a known pedophile from arrest. The ministry website said an internal review of the allegations “has not produced any evidence of any cover-up or conspiracy.”

Sovereign Grace Ministries is best known in Baptist life for ties between founder C.J. Mahaney and leaders in a movement sometimes called “young, restless and Reformed,” a resurgent interest in Calvinism gaining ground at Southern Baptist Convention seminaries.

Mahaney, who recently resigned as SGM president, planted a church in Louisville, Ky., last year when the ministry headquarters moved there from Gaithersburg, Md., in part to strengthen ties to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Seminary President Albert Mohler has worked with Mahaney on projects including Together for the Gospel, a conference for young pastors, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which has offices on the Southern Seminary campus. Podcasts by Mohler are offered in the Sovereign Grace Ministries Store.

The Sovereign Grace website includes Mahaney’s 2009 interview with Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In January, Akin brought Mahaney to the seminary campus in Wake Forest, N.C., to speak at this year’s 20/20 Collegiate Conference, an annual event for college students from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

Mahaney spoke recently at a conference in South Africa called Rezolution that he headlined with Calvinist leaders Kevin DeYoung, Ligon Duncan, Bob Kauflin and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington and president of 9Marks Ministries.

In February, a former SGM leader turned whistleblower accused Baptist and other evangelical leaders of enabling sin by continuing to promote Mahaney while questions about his fitness for ministry remain unanswered.

The second amended lawsuit adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It requests a jury trial.

A Southern Baptist seminary president urged evangelicals not to get too caught up in all the excitement surrounding the naming of a new pope.

“Evangelical Christians simply cannot accept the legitimacy of the papacy and must resist and reject claims of papal authority,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast commentary March 14. “To do otherwise would be to compromise biblical truth and reverse the Reformation.”

Mohler said the reformers rejected papal authority during the 16th century for good reasons that are seemingly forgotten today by “some liberal Protestants and careless evangelicals” seeking theological consensus and common ground on social issues like marriage and the sanctity of human life.

“First and foremost, evangelicals must affirm that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is an essential, because that is the very definition of the gospel itself, and there is nothing more core, central and essential than the gospel,” Mohler said.

“The reformers were absolutely right in saying that any understanding of justification – even the understanding that justification is by faith and something else -- is another gospel, is anathema to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Mohler said. “The only way of understanding salvation by grace alone through faith alone is defining justification as the Scripture defines it, and that is justification by faith alone.”

Mohler noted that Pope Benedict XVI famously affirmed the doctrine of justification by faith when writing about the apostle Paul, “but he would not add that crucial word ‘alone.’”

“Lacking the word ‘alone,’ that means justification by faith that works in synergistic mechanism with our own righteousness or attempts at righteousness and efforts to gain merit,” Mohler said.

Mohler said evangelicals watching the pope’s election also “must recognize what isn’t broadcast to the world with all of the adulation and attention and indeed celebrity focus that accompanied the press coverage.”

“For instance, the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches that the pope has the power to dispense merits, to forgive sin, to extend indulgences,” he said. “When you consider that you realize just how unbiblical this office is. The Roman Catholic Church, by its symbolism and by its formal teaching, says that the pope, whom they claim to be the successor of Peter, actually holds the keys of the kingdom to which Jesus refers in Matthew Chapter 16. We understand that the keys of the kingdom do indeed exist, that they belong to Christ and that they are handed to the church as a stewardship, not to Saint Peter.”

“Furthermore, when you look at the institution of the papacy, evangelicals looking at all the ceremony and all the liturgy and all the secrecy and all the mystery must understand what is crystal clear in official Roman Catholic teaching, and that is that the pope has the opportunity and the responsibility under the powers that are supposedly invested in him, to be a conduit of divine revelation,” he said.

“That is something that is anathema, absolutely foreign, absolutely in contradiction to the evangelical principle of sola scriptura -- of Scripture alone -- and of the affirmation of scriptural authority within the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohler, who has a Ph.D. in theology, has spoken out before on his views about Catholicism. "As an evangelical, I believe the Roman church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel," he said in a 2000 appearance on Larry King Live. "I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office."

A Southern Baptist seminary president urged evangelicals not to get too caught up in all the excitement surrounding the naming of a new pope.

“Evangelical Christians simply cannot accept the legitimacy of the papacy and must resist and reject claims of papal authority,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast commentary March 14. “To do otherwise would be to compromise biblical truth and reverse the Reformation.”

Mohler said the reformers rejected papal authority during the 16th century for good reasons that are seemingly forgotten today by “some liberal Protestants and careless evangelicals” seeking theological consensus and common ground on social issues like marriage and the sanctity of human life.

“First and foremost, evangelicals must affirm that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is an essential, because that is the very definition of the gospel itself, and there is nothing more core, central and essential than the gospel,” Mohler said.

“The reformers were absolutely right in saying that any understanding of justification – even the understanding that justification is by faith and something else -- is another gospel, is anathema to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Mohler said. “The only way of understanding salvation by grace alone through faith alone is defining justification as the Scripture defines it, and that is justification by faith alone.”

Mohler noted that Pope Benedict XVI famously affirmed the doctrine of justification by faith when writing about the apostle Paul, “but he would not add that crucial word ‘alone.’”

“Lacking the word ‘alone,’ that means justification by faith that works in synergistic mechanism with our own righteousness or attempts at righteousness and efforts to gain merit,” Mohler said.

Mohler said evangelicals watching the pope’s election also “must recognize what isn’t broadcast to the world with all of the adulation and attention and indeed celebrity focus that accompanied the press coverage.”

“For instance, the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches that the pope has the power to dispense merits, to forgive sin, to extend indulgences,” he said. “When you consider that you realize just how unbiblical this office is. The Roman Catholic Church, by its symbolism and by its formal teaching, says that the pope, whom they claim to be the successor of Peter, actually holds the keys of the kingdom to which Jesus refers in Matthew Chapter 16. We understand that the keys of the kingdom do indeed exist, that they belong to Christ and that they are handed to the church as a stewardship, not to Saint Peter.”

“Furthermore, when you look at the institution of the papacy, evangelicals looking at all the ceremony and all the liturgy and all the secrecy and all the mystery must understand what is crystal clear in official Roman Catholic teaching, and that is that the pope has the opportunity and the responsibility under the powers that are supposedly invested in him, to be a conduit of divine revelation,” he said.

“That is something that is anathema, absolutely foreign, absolutely in contradiction to the evangelical principle of sola scriptura -- of Scripture alone -- and of the affirmation of scriptural authority within the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohler, who has a Ph.D. in theology, has spoken out before on his views about Catholicism. "As an evangelical, I believe the Roman church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel," he said in a 2000 appearance on Larry King Live. "I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office."